Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(42)

I shake my head no. “If we see monsters, we’ll kill them. But it’s a waste of time to run down every unsubstantiated rumor when we have a lead on the source. Let the Thirsty Boys look for the monsters. We need to find the witch creating them. Chasing monsters is like cutting off the limbs of the tree when we need to take out the trunk.”

He’s looking at me, something unreadable in his eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just, I’m impressed.”

“Why, you think I’m all point gun and shoot, ask questions later?”

“A little.”

“Thanks.”

He laughs. And I smile along with him, some of the earlier tension between us melting away. “So you think that fire he mentioned is anything we need to worry about?” he asks.

“Probably not.”

He shifts in his seat. “Yeah, you’re right. But do you mind if we swing by my grandpa’s place? Since we were thinking of stopping in Tse Bonito for batteries anyway.”

Longarm’s warning to stay out of Tse Bonito should give me pause, but the Law Dog’s threats have never meant much to me. We’ll be careful and stay out of sight. Besides, if there’s really a fire, the Law Dog is bound to have his hands full with that.

Kai shudders, rubs his hands up and down his arms.

“You okay?”

“You ever get a chill, like someone walked over your grave? I’m sure it’s nothing. Just . . .” He shivers again.

I don’t say anything, but I do give the truck a little more gas.

We’re silent after that, both of us lost in our own thoughts, until Kai says, “So what did you do to make that Thirsty Boy so pissed off ?”

I roll my eyes. “That man can hold a grudge until the end of time.”

“No kidding. I thought that Law Dog hated you yesterday, but this guy . . .”

“Yeah.” I wave a hand in the air, like our encounter with the Thirsty Boy has left a haze behind that needs clearing. “Everybody hates me. I get it.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Why do you assume I did anything?” I ask, mildly outraged.

He chuckles. “I’ve known you twenty-four hours and even I can tell that you have a gift for pissing people off. Are you saying you didn’t do anything?”

“Fine. I cost him some money once, a few months back. That bounty hunt I told you about. It’s a long story, and it’s stupid, if you ask me, but he will not let it go.”

Kai nods thoughtfully. “Did you pay him back?”

“Pay him? It doesn’t work like that. It was a bounty that went wrong. I don’t actually owe him anything.”

“But you said—”

“Then I misspoke. Forget it.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe.” He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll help you fix it.”

“It’s been six months. How are you going to fix it?”

“Leave it to me.”

“I don’t want you paying—”

“No, nothing like that. I’ll just talk to him.”

“Talk? You might have been able to bullshit Longarm yesterday, but Hastiin is a whole other story. He’s not an idiot like that Law Dog. He’s just . . . annoying. Stubborn.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it. Damn. Look at that.”

I follow his gaze out the windshield in front of us. We’re pulling up to the Tse Bonito turnoff of Highway 134. Before us, thick black smoke billows skyward, sickly clouds marring the otherwise immaculate blue sky.

“What is that?” he whispers as I slow my truck to a crawl. It’s not a brush fire, that’s for sure. “Is that . . . ?”

Foreboding floods my body, gripping me in the gut and sending blood roaring through my head. The fire is rising up from somewhere near the heart of the warren of shops, near the place where Tah lives.

“Oh . . . ,” I hear myself say.

Kai’s voice sounds a million miles away, wrapped in cotton, down a well, deep below water, when he says, “I think Tah’s hogan is on fire.”





Chapter 19


I drive past the place where Tah’s hogan was yesterday. Or as close to it as I can get. Law Dogs have barred access to Tse Bonito’s main road with blue-and-white sawhorses that read POLICE LINE and are diverting traffic down the two-lane highway that runs east and west out of town.

It takes all my willpower not to ram my truck through that police line and head straight to Tah’s door. A small voice in my head pleads with me to stay calm, to keep breathing and think. But my hands are rattling so hard I can barely hang on to the steering wheel. My breath is short and stuttering and all my thoughts are the color of pitch.

A dozen Dogs in CWAG khaki are standing around the police barrier nervously fingering their gun belts or casting anxious looks toward the blaze. A crowd of townspeople has gathered along the sloping sides of the highway, and we’re all stacked up like tiered corn cake—cops, civilians, and cars, crushed together to gawk at the flames that flare from the roof of the hogan and the cloud of dirty smoke the fire has flung into the sky. All of us craning our necks to get a better look at the disaster.

All but one man, who has his back turned to the fire and instead scans the crowd, searching faces and committing bystanders to memory.