Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(6)

The severed heads are heavy and wet against my back, and the long trek out of the forest in the dark carrying them is more nightmare stuff. The only plus side is that I’m alone. No animals, no more monsters. I catch sight of a coyote trailing me a time or two, but it keeps its distance. Just a pair of yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness.

A single bare bulb lights the door to the Chapter House. It should feel like a beacon welcoming me back, but instead it glows menacing and pale. The front door is shuttered, barred against the monsters in the night. Not sure if they meant to include me in that or not, but I pound heavy on the door, hoping someone’s still waiting up.

Locks turn inside. A face peers out. It’s my runner, the same kid who came to my door this morning to offer me the Lukachukai job.

“Where is everybody?” I ask.

He eyeballs me, and I realize I must look pretty grisly. I push my hair out of my face, streaking blood across my forehead, and give him a smile.

“Locked up tight,” he says. “Scared of the monsters.”

“Even the brother?”

His mouth twists. “Especially him.”

I grin. I’m not the only one who was unimpressed with the younger Begay. “Why aren’t you locked up tight?”

“I volunteered to stay. I’m not scared of monsters.”

“No?” I shift the bloody bags on my shoulder to the other side, hear the click of skull bone against skull bone. “Why not?”

“I knew you’d kill it. You’re famous.”

I snort. “Famous, huh?”

“The girlfriend of the Monsterslayer.”

My mouth turns down in a hard frown. “I am not his girlfriend.”

He looks at me, disappointed. You and me both.

“Look,” I say, “you got my trade?”

“You got the bounty?”

No nonsense, this kid. I swing the bags off my shoulder. Hang on to the bigger one and drop the smaller one to the side. “Don’t open that.” I point with my lips to the small bag. “That’s for the family. Give them something to bury.”

“You didn’t save her?”

I don’t answer that. It’s too complicated and I’m too tired to explain it. I hold the bigger bag open, give him a chance to peer inside.

As he does, some of his bluster fades and he swallows hard. “Is that . . . ?”

“Monster’s head. I’m taking it to a medicine man I know in Tse Bonito so he can tell me what it is. What it was.”

The kid nods. “Cool.” Maybe it is when you’re his age, but to me it’s anything but. He reaches around behind the door and pulls out the same Blue Bird bag from before.

I take a moment to check it. Same silver jewelry, same shit turquoise.

“Really?”

“Oh!” he says, like he forgot. He reaches back behind the door and pulls out two blankets. One looks like a Pendleton, thick and warm but the bright blues and greens and yellows of the generic arrow patterns are common enough. But the other one. I recognize it as a Two Grey Hills, a rug my nalí taught me was rare and prized and not made that often anymore.

I’m impressed. “That’s big trade.”

He shrugs, digs at something between his teeth. His eyes wander to the small blood-crusted bag, but not like he’s scared of what’s in it. More like he’s curious.

I keep the Pendleton but hand him back the Two Grey Hills. “Tell the family that we’re even. Traded up.” Pay is pay, and I’m not going soft. But I can’t take the Two Grey Hills when I’ve got their daughter’s head in a bag.

I tuck the garish blanket under my arm, pick up the jewelry bag in one hand, and scoop up the bag with the monster’s head in the other. Turn toward my truck.

“So you think there’s more monsters?” His voice behind me is a little breathy, growing excitement more than fear.

“Won’t know until the medicine man tells me about it.”

I sense rather than see him reach for the little bag. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s her, enit?” he says, full-on excited now. “Atty?”

I didn’t know her name.

I throw the monster’s head in the back of the truck, and place the rugs and the jewelry on the seat next to me. I look back in the rearview to see the kid still crouched there under the bare bulb, staring at the bag with Atty’s head.





Chapter 4


I live in a one-bedroom single-wide trailer I picked up a few months back. The previous owner died in his sleep, and nobody else would live in it after that. So it was a steal, as in free. I’ve got it parked on a scrubby parcel of land about an hour south of Lukachukai in the Crystal Valley. It sits a half mile from the old abandoned boarding school that gave the valley its nominal fame and right below the entrance to Narbona Pass, the only road across the Chuska Mountains for fifty miles in either direction. The pass itself is named for the ill-fated Navajo chief named Narbona who, back in 1849, showed up to negotiate a peace treaty with the US Army and ended up shot to death over a stolen horse and a bad translator. So go the peacemakers.

There are only about twenty-five families stretched sparsely throughout the ten-mile-long valley, and most of them are clustered at the highway turnoff that I passed four miles back. That leaves me with no close neighbors, which is fine by me. Of course, not having any people around also means that if I get in trouble, no one’s going to come save me. I’m pretty good at saving myself, but even badass Diné warriors need a little help sometimes. Just ask Narbona.