Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(34)

I drop to the ground when they release my arms. Lay my head down in the wet carpet. The sticky sweetness of my own vomit coats my cheek as I lie there, silent, and listen as they butcher my grandmother for meat.

When it is my turn to die, I don’t resist. They rouse me from the pool of sick on the floor. Loop the cord around my hands so they can hang me up.

A sound outside.

The witch pauses, rope still loose around my wrists. He turns toward the door. We all do. A noise, faint at first, the wind through the shattered windows. A kiss of cold touches my face, a whisper of words in my ear. A song I’ve never heard, but the melody is sweet like the taste of blood, the descant as bright as new steel. It wakes me from my stupor, clears my mind in a skull that no longer aches.

It strengthens the resolve of a will that was once broken.

Hardens a heart that was once soft.

And I see.

The dull glint of dirty silver around the witch’s neck. The red lake that laps at my toes. The hard killing metal of the butchering knife lying momentarily forgotten on the floor next to their abomination of fresh meat.

And I move.

The first one is easy to kill. The rope in my hands wraps around his neck, and the butchering knife dances in my hand, and the man is dead before I even realize I am in motion. That I’ve done it at all. Silence, the others so stunned that they only turn and stare at the girl who moments ago was a lamb willing to be led to the slaughter.

And then the quiet breaks.

Shouts, as the fragile men move in slow motion around me. I see their actions, the path their bodies will follow before they do. And I am there, making sure they never move again. Even the spray of blood from the witch’s throat seems to spatter my face in slow motion, and I watch, pleased, as his gray eyes go dim.

I can’t say what awakened my clan powers in that moment, before I knew these powers existed, before it was known among the Diné that such a thing could happen. I sometimes wonder if it was the ghostly kiss I felt from the wind, and whether it was the wind that touched me at all. Or something more. Something, or someone, else. That showed me just how terrible I could be.

I’m not sure how many I’ve killed when I feel the first tug of my clan power fading, like the ebb of an ocean tide. The massive adrenaline rush I’m riding falls away too, leaving my hands shaking and me suddenly straining against an all-consuming exhaustion.

I search the trailer, wild-eyed, reeling and terrified that I have not killed them all and now my body is failing and it will be too late. But I only see dead men on the ground, smell their loosed bowels and coppery blood mingling with that of my dead grandmother.

My shoulders sag and a sob flies from my lips.

Until I see him.

He is huge, broad and tall, and he bends his back to fit through the front door of our trailer. He carries a sword made of white fire.

At first I think he is one of them. Then I see his wings. Wings that aren’t wings at all but hair so long and black that it seems to take flight as it flares out around him. He is terrible and beautiful and there is nothing human about him. I understand. He is a demon, come to punish me for the horrors I’ve committed.

But I won’t let him take me. I won’t make that mistake again. I stumble backward. Slip in a pool of blood and viscera. With my last ounce of strength I raise my knife in front of me, grasping it with both hands to keep it steady, praying for one more miracle.

And the demon smiles.

He tells me his name is Naayéé’ Neizghání and he is honored to have been there at my rebirth. He calls me “Chíníbaá’,” a traditional Diné name that means “girl who comes out fighting.” He thanks me for killing the witch and his three men, as they are the very monsters he’s been tracking for days.

I only killed four? I ask him.

He laughs. Are not four lives in one day enough?

In the grasp of the clan powers it felt like more. But no, he killed two who fled, and left the leader and three others for me.

Mercy, I tell him. Whisper it to him through a hideous bloody smile and gritted teeth. Whisper it again. And again. Until I fall, shattered, into his arms and he carries me away from that trailer and back to his camp. He leaves me to wash the blood of my enemies from my skin. He feeds me. He explains to me that I am touched by death now and that it’s changed me, but I can heal if I have the proper ceremonies and allow the seasons to pass.

I never go back to my grandmother’s house, to that trailer on the ridge. There is nothing there for me. With Neizghání, I have something, even if it is born from blood and violence. He agrees to train me, teach me how to fight, how to use weapons and track slyer creatures than the first ones I killed.

I never have those ceremonies to take the touch of death away from my spirit, but the seasons do pass. In time the wounds of that night begin to scab over, and as long as I don’t pick at the memories, as long as I only use them to fuel my savagery and lock them away in the dark places inside me when I am done, I’m okay.

And it becomes a life. My life. Hunting monsters for trade and learning the ways of violence at the feet of a master. It is a life that I can endure, even sometimes enjoy.

Until Neizghání leaves. And I am left alone to hunt the monsters by myself, both the visible kind that steal away little girls to eat their flesh, and the invisible kind that live under the skin, eating at the little girl from inside.