Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Prologue
It was late summer, the life-sustaining monsoon season in New Mexico. Despite last night’s downpour, drizzle still fell from the low, scattered, gray clouds that remained.
Oblivious to the morning mist, Detective Luca Nakai of the Navajo Tribal Police jogged up the canyon trail heading east—the direction that symbolized the origin of all things. Greeting the dawn daily in this way kept him focused and centered.
Reaching the top of the mesa behind his home, he stopped and prayed quietly. “Beautiful Dawn, let it be well with me.” Luca touched Mother Earth, raised his hands to Sun, and then drew them back toward him, drinking in life and strengthening his mind so he could accomplish whatever tasks lay ahead. Something bad was coming. He could feel it in his gut.
Gathering strength from the Navajo Way, he began the last half of his morning run. The air was crisp and clean, a gentle breeze dispersing the clouds now, and the land reverberated with power. Let others live addicted to cell phones, the parasitic attachment of earphone-fed music and the compulsions of e-mail and the Internet. Wherever technology deadened the human spirit, silence, inner and outward, soon became a casualty.
As he ran, Luca listened to the whispers of the land. He was the son of the tribe’s most powerful hataalii, medicine man, and as such, understood that life was composed of far more than what the eye could see.
Although Luca had apprenticed with his father for many years and could conduct a Sing on his own if needed, he’d ultimately chosen not to become a hataalii. To follow that path, harmony, balance and order would have had to have been at the center of his life allowing him to walk in beauty. But that wasn’t the case. He’d failed himself and one other, and that unalterable fact would follow him for the rest of his days.
Soon Luca reached his home, a simple, pitched-roof ranch-style house in the shadows of the Carrizo Mountains. Two trucks were parked near the side, not far from the traditional six-sided hogan away from the main house. One vehicle belonged to his father, who was known as Bijishii, the man with the medicine bag. Real names had power and weren’t used lightly. The other belonged to the man he knew only as Diné Nééz, tall man. His presence here meant that he was about to receive a new assignment from the Brotherhood of Warriors.
As a member of that secret organization, Luca was part of an elite force. Created during the time of Kit Carson, the Brotherhood of Warriors were an unassailable line of defense that stood between the tribe and its enemies. The best of the best, they worked in the shadows—warriors who were never identified, seldom seen but always felt. They existed so that The People could continue to walk in beauty, honoring the past and looking forward to a secure future.
Diné Nééz was standing beside the hogan’s entrance. As Luca walked toward the hogan, he could see white smoke curling upward from the hole in the center of the roof.
Whatever lay ahead would challenge him on every level. He’d felt the danger…something without a name…touching his spirit, calling to him for days now. And he was ready. This was what he did—fight battles most would have been reluctant to wage. His work as a warrior defined him and gave him purpose.
Luca joined Diné Nééz near the entrance to the hogan and greeted him with a silent nod. They didn’t shake hands—it wasn’t the Navajo way. “You and my father both here? This can’t be good.”
“I bring disturbing news, Cougar,” he said, using Luca’s code name. “Word has reached us that a murder that carries the signature of a skinwalker has been reported outside Albuquerque,” he added in a barely audible voice, his hand reaching up to grasp the flint arrowhead he wore on a leather strap around his neck.
Luca understood Diné Nééz’s caution. To speak the word “skinwalker” out loud was said to call that evil onto you. Speech was more powerful than the Anglo world realized…or would believe.
“Bijishii suggested that you have a Blackening done before you go,” he said, referring to a well-practiced rite. Blackening cloaked an individual against evil. The rite would give him the power of Monster Slayer, who’d defeated all the evils that had preyed on The People at the beginning. “He’ll also be preparing a special jish, medicine bundle, to help you.”
Skinwalkers…. Navajo witches. They hid under the skin of a coyote or a wolf while they roamed the night spilling blood. Deluded or not, these men or women were feared—and with reason.
“Is this a Brotherhood assignment?”
“It is. The skinwalker has issued a challenge to us. The sign of the Brotherhood of Warriors, flames bounded by a circle, was left in ashes near the body. The officer who first responded is one of us, and sent word to me immediately.”
Now, at long last, he knew why he’d been chosen. As the son of a hataalii, Luca had knowledge that would give him the only power obtainable over this enemy.
“The Brotherhood will be close by if you need backup. The code word that’ll allow you to recognize another warrior is hasih. The counter is bideelni.”
Appropriate. The greeting, loosely translated, meant “hope.” The answer meant “to make it happen.”
“Understood.”
Luca brushed aside the heavy wool blanket covering the entrance to the hogan and went inside. The interior had been warmed by the burning piñon logs in the central fire pit. He sat on the ground on the south side and faced his father, who was seated on the west side behind the small fire.
Diné Nééz followed him in and took a seat beside Luca.
After a momentary, preparatory silence, Bijishii’s voice rose in a chant that vibrated with power and echoed with tradition. The richness of his voice sparked the air as the animal-hide rattle punctuated each sound.
When his song ended, Bijishii looked at his son. “The cougar is your spiritual brother and that connection will strengthen and prepare you for what lies ahead. Like cougar, you’ve become a master hunter, but for this assignment you’ll need to draw on cougar’s other attributes—his strength of will, intuition and steadfastness.”
Luca watched as his father assembled the contents of the new medicine bundle he’d be carrying. The jish would be tailor-made to fight the dangers he’d be facing on this assignment.
“Flint will repel the chindi, the evil in a man that survives death but remains earthbound,” Bijishii said. “Flint’s power comes from its hardness and the flashes of light it emits. It represents lightning, and the moments just before dawn. I’m also placing a piece of turquoise in the bag. That’ll honor Sun, who placed Turquoise Man inside his own child to make him invincible. There’s corn pollen in the jish, too. That’ll feed the spirit of the cougar,” he added, then held out his hand. “Hand me your fetish now.”
Luca gave his father the small stone carving he carried with him in a special pouch.
“Everything
