Bolt growled and lowered her head until her chin dipped in the water. Logan turned and surveyed the empty, water-logged land around us. “I am told you slew a wendigo,” Logan said. “Is that true?”
I steadied myself as the rumbling in the ground increased. “I had a lot of help.”
“What is coming is far fiercer than any wendigo.” He narrowed his eyes at Sal, who had gotten up on all fours. “She’s coming back.”
The ground suddenly crumbled under my feet and I was thrust into the air. It took a long moment before I realized I hadn’t just been tossed, but that I was sliding down the back of the enormous snake. Her scales shifted underneath me as she rose higher into the sky. I gripped at them, desperately trying to find something to hold onto. It wasn’t until I slid down to her wings that I finally found something. My fingers closed on a handful of white feathers and I held on for dear life, squeezing my eyes shut so I didn’t think about how high up I was. When she stopped moving, however, I just couldn’t help myself.
I cracked one eye open and peered down fifty dizzying feet at the ground. Below, Logan had taken off running, his dog beside him. He threw his arms wide and, in a flash of light, changed from man back into Thunderbird. Logan flapped his wings and rose, fingers of lightning erupting under his wings and propelling him higher.
At the sight of him coming, Zara recoiled and let out another ear-splitting screech. But this time, she didn’t plow down at him. She too flapped her wings wildly and we began to lift away from the ground.
If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have told you something as big as a Thunderbird could never fly without having something tall to glide off of. Condors take off from mountain sides and their huge wingspan and body size isn’t close to Logan’s. Zara was even bigger. There was no way, according to everything I knew about physics, that she should have been able to use those wings to fly.
And yet she did.
Zara propelled us into the sky at breakneck speed. Between the wind pressing against me and the flapping of her wings under my hands, I couldn’t hold on. The sheer force of gravity kicked in and pulled me away from Zara and back toward Earth at a deadly speed. I fell facing the sky and not the ground. Wind resistance pushed against the back of my head, throwing my limbs up. It was a lot of effort to move and fight the drag. It was part instinct and part gravity that made me turn over. Panic set in as I watched the ground close. I’d have three seconds, maybe four before I hit and splattered the ground with my entrails.
A black shape loomed underneath me and I hit it before I could process what was happening. Pain lit up my chest where I’d struck and forced all thought from my head. The wind never stopped rushing against me, and when the pain lessened enough that I could draw breath and think, I saw that I was on Logan’s back and we were headed back into the sky. Unlike Zara’s frantic flapping, Logan’s wings moved smoothly and with more control, keeping me from falling off. I had more to grip, as I held onto what felt like strong bones on the forefront of his wings. On his back, we climbed into the sky and leveled out next to but slightly above Zara’s head.
I fought the wind to open my eyes and turn to look at her. Why wasn’t Logan attacking and hitting her with his lightning? If we didn’t force her to the ground, she’d get out of the reservation for sure and then there was no telling where she’d go. We had to stop her. Wasn’t that his primary mission?
As we glided next to her, I realized he probably couldn’t use his lightning and thunder, not unless he wanted to electrocute me. So why climb all the way up there? Was there something he wanted me to see?
Something only you can see, a voice in my head answered, a voice that was not my own.
I was so shocked by the sudden intrusion, I nearly let go of Logan.
He shifted his flight slightly to keep me from falling. Hurry up! We’re running out of time.
Her aura, I thought. He wants me to look at her aura.
There was no time to argue. Zara was headed for the edge of the reservation. Thankfully, it was the unmanned edge, so we weren’t in any danger of being shot, but I’d have a lot more explaining to do if we brought her down on the outside as opposed to inside.
I closed my eyes and fought to clear my mind, concentrating only on the ebb and flow of magick all around me. There was a lot of it, and very little was mine, so it was difficult, but I managed by focusing on drawing in and out breath. When I opened my eyes, it was with another sight, the one that let me see the auras that surround and run through all living things.
Auras can be all colors, from deep navy blue to brilliant gold. The meanings of those colors is open to interpretation and a subject under much debate in academic circles. Those of us who can see them know that color is no good indicator of anything because each shade of every color also comes with a feeling. Some of the most terrifying auras I had seen were gold but felt inky black. In some, a deep red felt more like a burning passion, while it meant vengeance in others. The feeling associated with what we see tells us more than any one color ever will.
Zara’s aura was a flowing river of rainbow colors except for a single white scale in the center of her forehead. I’d never seen anything like it, nor had I felt anything similar. I felt the pain of loss, the agony of confusion, and... something else. Something that reminded me of a summer afternoon in West Virginia when I was a teenager.
I’d been mowing the lawn and hit a nest of baby rabbits. Two had escaped, but one little guy got caught by the mower and sliced up beyond the possibility of survival, but he didn’t die right away. The poor baby laid there in pain and suffering and I was faced with a terrible decision. I could either put the poor bunny out if its misery and kill it or let it suffer until it died a natural death. I searched the area frantically, not completely sure what I was looking for, and my eyes settled on a brick. One hard strike with that, and the dying rabbit would find a merciful end—or so I thought. I gripped the brick and lifted it high, watching the little rabbit’s insides twitch. Tears streamed down my face and I turned away as I brought the brick down hard, twice just to make sure. Then, I glanced up and saw another rabbit at the edge of the yard, staring at me, this one too big to have been one of the escaped babies. Mamma rabbit had watched me murder her baby. Guilt couldn’t begin to describe how I felt as something died in me that day. I couldn’t mow the lawn without crying for the rest of that summer.
I snapped out of the memory to find I was crying again.
Zara had shifted her flight path back toward the ground near the edge of the river and Logan had followed. She landed in the water gracefully, still a feathered, antlered snake. Her body lit up with a bright light and, when that light faded, Zara stood as a human woman again. She cast her eyes up at us, that same guilt and sense of loss etched into her features. Then, she dove into the river and did not come up.
Logan did not come down in the water, but turned and flew back to the shallow water where we’d taken off and then a few yards more to find dry ground. He hovered near the ground, which I took as my sign to get off. I’d never been so happy to be on solid, dry ground in my life, but I was crazy dizzy from the fall, the flight, and the toll the magick had taken. I almost fell over.
Logan shifted back into a fully-clothed man and his dog and then stood from where he knelt. “What did you see?”
Exhaustion settled in, but I fought it. I had to see this through. There’d be plenty of time to sleep when I was dead. “Beauty and pain. Guilt. Loss.”
“All words that describe her tale equally.” Logan nodded.
“I’m going to need you to explain some of this.”
Logan’s eyes shifted beyond me and he smirked. “I think the boy’s eyes may fall out of his head.”
I turned to regard Sal who really did look shocked. His eyes were wide and his jaw slack, leaving his mouth open. “You’re a... You really are?”
Logan chuckled and came to give Sal a firm slap on the shoulder. “So much for ‘it’s just a story,’ huh? Come. Let’s go find something worth eating and talk. I’ll tell you everything.”
~
Sal was all too happy to invite us all back to his place for some reason, though he spent the first ten or fifteen minutes we were there cleaning. I’ve never seen a bachelor run around picking up empty beer bottles and wiping crumbs off the couch with such worry on his face. He ushered Logan to the place he’d cleared, but only after throwing a clean blanket over the furniture to make sure it was suitable for someone to sit on. Then, he got Bolt some water and tossed some cut up bits of beef into another bowl that the dog gladly gobbled up.
Meanwhile, I busied myself moving a stack of medical magazines and books from the old chair in the corner and sat across from Logan while Sal rushed around the kitchen, pots and pans clanging.
“Just so we’re clear,” I said, leaning forward, “no more poking around in my head, no matter how important you think it is that you tell me something. You either talk to me as a person, or write it down, or something. My brain is off-limits. I don’t care who you are.”
Logan smiled and pulled off his boots to reveal his sopping wet socks, which he also stripped off and then placed inside his boots before putting his bare feet up on Sal’s coffee table. “You have secrets.”
“No, I just don’t like people poking around in my head without my permission.”
He shrugged and then relaxed back against the sofa. “Everyone has secrets. Direct communication is more efficient, especially considering in that form my voice has been known to deafen humans such as yourself.”
“Which brings us to the matter at hand. You’re not a normal shifter, are you?”
Logan closed his eyes and folded his hands over his chest. “All your questions will be answered in time. For now, rest your tongue. I imagine it’s tired.”
I sucked in a deep breath and worked to restrain myself from snapping back at him. The only thing that really kept me from telling him where he could shove his opinion on how much I talked was the fact that Sal called me into the kitchen.
“Enjoy your nap,” I mumbled as I rose.
“Thank you, I will.” Logan didn’t even open his eyes.
I went to join Sal in the kitchen where he’d taken out a large, round yellow squash and sliced it in half. He was busy scooping the seeds into another bowl. “Will you hand me that olive oil over there?”
I grabbed the bottle he’d gestured to and unscrewed the cap setting it in front of him. “Why is it you’re suddenly being a hell of a lot nicer to this guy, Sal?”
He grabbed the bottle and dumped a few tablespoons worth of olive oil in each half before proceeding to massage it into the squash. “Because he’s not just a guy. He’s a Thunderbird, Judah. That’d be like... Well, if an angel showed up at your door.”
“I’d tell him the church was across town.” I crossed my arms. “I know better than to let uber-powerful supernaturals put me in a situation where I’m likely to be indebted to them or them to me. I’ve got enough to worry about. Besides, I’ve never thought of you as the religious type.”
Sal put the squash open end down on a baking pan and slid it into the oven before going to the sink to wash his hands. Luckily, he had one of those older ovens that ran on natural gas instead of electricity. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have worked with the power still out. Once he’d washed his hands, he pulled out an egg timer, wound it and sat it on the stove.
“I don’t know about that. I’m apprenticed to a Shoshone healer and second in his pack of werewolves. I suppose my faith’s been on shaky ground since the war. Not that this changes that it’s just... Judah, there’s a guy out of my bedtime stories sitting in my living room, a guy who has parts to play in creation myths that have been passed down through my family for generations. It’s not someone I want to piss off.”
That was true. I supposed you couldn’t be an apprentice medicine man without having some degree of Faith. Chanter would have scowled at me for even thinking the phrase ‘medicine man,’ since that’s an English word and a corruption of the truth. But the term was so widely used now, there really wasn’t any good substitute.
“Besides,” Sal continued, “Chanter gave me a responsibility to represent the pack for today. I have to make sure I do that right.”
“What does that mean, exactly? How does it change things?”
Sal shut off the water and dried his hands on a worn red dish towel. “There are eight of us in the pack right now and one prospective member. The alpha always has a sense of what’s going on with each one of us through the pack bonds, even if it’s just background noise. He can feel on some level what the others do and monitor how they are, but he can also pull on those bonds if needed. Pull too hard, and the connection can break. The alpha becomes disconnected from the pack and the bonds shatter top down. Some use it to make themselves stronger. I know Chanter can use it to heal faster or pass that healing to someone else. He’s transferred a good bit of that power to me to see how I can handle it.”
I studied him closer. He looked tired, maybe more tired than usual, but that was probably because he’d barely slept since yesterday. No, there was more to it than just looking tired. An invisible weight sat on his shoulders, forcing them down. The muscles of his whole upper body looked strained. He looked like he was sick, or fighting being sick. “And how are you handling it?”
Sal closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side. “Nina’s too far away still for me to get much, but I can sense her anxiety. It’s overpowering how pissed off she probably is. Shauna and Daphne and Ed are all generally worried. It’s no wonder. I called them late last night and told them what had happened. They’re doing shifts at the hospital with Valentino. Valentino and Leo...” He trailed off and then winced. “They’re both in a lot of pain. Even if I’m not concentrating on it, it’s always there. Makes it hard to focus. All I want to do is go lie down.” He opened his eyes and offered me a weak smile. “But I’ve got things to do. Gotta help you find a way to help Valentino. Doesn’t matter how tired I am. I have to keep going.”
I smiled back and chuckled. “Kind of reminds me when Hunter was younger. He was wild. Between raising him and work, I got maybe three hours of sleep every day. I bet it is sort of like having kids.”
His smile faded.
I realized what I’d said all too late. Sal and his ex-wife had never been able to have children, even though he’d always wanted a family. That disconnect was what eventually drove them apart.
“Sal—”
He held up a hand. “It’s alright.”
“Being responsible for anyone else is indeed exhausting,” Logan said from the sofa. “Especially one who isn’t able to see the consequences of their own actions.”
Sal and I exchanged glances before we both came back to the living room. Logan hadn’t moved a muscle, but Bolt had come to lay at his feet, resting her head on her paws. The dog didn’t seem to mind being in the same house as a werewolf, which was surprising to me. I’d always assumed that werewolves and dogs might not get along. I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe it’s because I’ve never met a werewolf with a pet. Smaller animals always tended to get spooked around werewolves.
Sal brought out his pack of cigarettes, took one out and offered it to Logan, who had finally opened his eyes. Logan took it, but tucked it behind his ear instead of putting it in his mouth. “If you want to know about Zara, you must first understand that she is not human, no matter how human she may appear. She may walk and talk and live as a human, but she will never be one of you.”
“She seemed...” I trailed off, looking for the right word.
“Naïve? Immature? Touched in the head, perhaps?”
“Innocent and childlike.”
Logan grunted and sat forward, taking his feet from the table. “Zara was not born for this world. She was born of magick, very old magick, and brought into this world for one purpose and one purpose only. That purpose was vengeance against the Creator who her makers believed had turned his back on them. The people were riddled with illness and misery and blamed their Maker, and so they bid their leader, a powerful medicine man, to create a tool of vengeance. He refused, of course, because it was not their way. He instructed the people to bear death and disease as part of life.
“But the people could not. They came day and night, begging him to relieve them. Still, he refused. That is, until one day when his daughter became very sick. No medicine could cure her and the girl died. In his grief, the medicine man turned his back on his vows and used dark magick to imbibe his daughter’s body with the power of Uktena who was said to have the power to destroy the Creator spirit.”
While Logan spoke, I slid back over to the chair and sat down again, but his story brought me to the edge of the seat. “According the legend I read, Uktena failed to destroy God.”
Logan nodded. “That’s correct, but not because of anything any god did. It was her own father who stopped her. The spirit possessing his daughter did not understand death and consequence, only vengeance. In her quest to destroy the Creator, she drowned every child in the village, including her own, for her song was so beautiful that none could resist.
“The old medicine man knew she had to be stopped, and so used the same magick to transform himself into the one creature that could stop her.”
“Thunderbird,” Sal whispered.
“Thunderbird took her away, locked her in a place where she could no longer harm the living.”
“That would be Galunlati, which Zara was telling us about,” I said. “But what happened to the man who became Thunderbird?”
Logan sighed and leaned back, crossing his arms. “It became his job to watch over his daughter’s prison. He did his best to keep her happy and comfortable, to teach her. But she couldn’t be sated. She watched as her children were born and reborn, and died and redied, mourning them every day. Her tears made the rain and her furious grief the hurricanes that strike the coast. She would stop at nothing to have another chance to be with her children.”
There was a long pause. No one dared speak. I could sense that Logan wasn’t done with his story, but it seemed he was caught in a memory. When he finally did speak again, it was in a quieter voice. “One day, when the old man was sleeping, she escaped her prison and came back to the place where her village once stood, but the village was gone. The land had changed. She found she no longer understood the world, but she would not give up the quest to find her lost children.”
He raised his gaze from the top of the table he’d been staring at. “Zara does not understand consequence. She’s so taken by her own grief that she’s unable to process much else. It’s broken her. The danger Zara presents is that she is powerful and driven to a goal without any morals to limit how she might achieve that goal.”
“Who are her children?” I asked.
Logan’s face went blank. “What?”
I threw my arms up. “She’s looking for her kids, right? Why not just show them to her and be done with it?”
“Because,” Sal said, “according to those beliefs, when souls are reborn, it’s never in one piece. Even if she only had one child, the parts of him would be scattered from one end of the Earth to the other. It’d take decades to find all the pieces.”
“And she was a mother of two,” Logan said, nodding. “If she remains, she will be doomed to search the entire Earth for an eternity looking for children that are no longer. Even if she assembled all the pieces, they wouldn’t know her. All it would cause is more pain and suffering.” Logan turned to me. “I must take her back where she came from.”
“She’s not going to go willingly.” I remembered how desperate Zara had seemed. She’d painted the Thunderbird as an uncaring monster when he was really just a father riddled by his own desperate grief.
“I can force her, but she would only find a way to escape again,” Logan said.
“Then what do you expect us to do?” Sal sat down on the arm of the sofa furthest from Logan. “If you can’t talk to her and convince her, what makes you think either of us can do anything?”
“Judah, you saw the white scale on her forehead?”
I nodded. It had stuck out like a sore thumb to me, though it looked the same as any other scale when I wasn’t looking at her aura. I’d only be able to see it if I concentrated on her aura.
“It is the source of her power, the thing that allows her to change shape. When she is a human, it will be just as visible here.” Logan pointed to his forehead between the eyes. “Remove the scale while she is in her snake form, and not only will she be unable to shift, but I can take it and craft a remedy for your sick werewolf friend.”
“No offense, old man, but isn’t she just going to get more pissed off if she can’t shift anymore?” I asked. “I still don’t see how that will help us talk her into going back with you.”
“I promise once you remove the scale, all will be clear.”
I frowned. I was getting real tired of all the vague speech, even if that came with the territory of talking to old Cherokee demigods...mythical beings...whatever. Why was it that no one could just give me a straight answer?
I huffed and let my shoulders deflate. No point in arguing. Like Sal said, Logan wasn’t the kind of guy I’d want mad at me. “Fine, but how do we get her to come back out and shift? And when she does, how am I supposed to peel off one of her scales? I imagine she’s not just going to let me do it.”
Logan smiled in response. Judging by the smile, I knew I wasn’t going to like his idea, no matter what it was.