From the house, I heard Cookie bark an alert. She was answered by two hunting howls, high-pitched and hungry, one on either side of me. Judging by what I had learned while Gary and I had been chased by the pair of tibicenas, they were maybe a hundred yards apart. The sound they made wasn’t the same one that had made my blood freeze when Coyote had taken Gary and me out. Maybe that meant they were still in a vulnerable form, something I could kill.
A darker shadow moved where there hadn’t been a shadow before, and Juan Flores, who was Guayota, stepped out where I could see him. I didn’t bother aiming my gun at him, though I remembered that he’d staggered back when I’d shot him before. He stopped at the edge of the lawn.
“Where is she?” he asked. “Where have you put her?”
He looked so human—but so did I, I supposed.
“She’s gone,” I told him. “We sent her away when we heard your car.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said, a faint frown between his eyebrows.
“I know,” I told him. For a moment I wasn’t scared, just sad. He was so lost. “She’s not who you think she is.”
“Yes,” he said, and, for a moment, the sadness in his voice echoed mine. “Yes, she is. Do you think that I would not recognize the face of my beloved? I looked across the room, and there she was—she knew it, too. I come to you this night, made strong from hot new blood, but I need her to feel complete. Without her by my side, I am always hungry.”
More bodies somewhere, Tony, I thought.
“We are ready to renew the hunt, and she cannot be hidden from me,” continued Flores in this creepy, reasonable voice I remembered from before. “But she might be hurt if we are forced to continue to hunt her, that is the nature of a hunt. I don’t want to hurt her. If you tell me where she is, I won’t hurt her.”
He was sincere. He didn’t want to hurt her. I thought of Kyle’s story and wondered if perhaps he had not meant to hurt the goddess he’d kidnapped and raped. Intention and results are often different.
“No,” I said.
As soon as I refused, Flores’s eyes flared red, and his face, though still human-featured, lost any resemblance to a real human expression. “Take her,” he said.
Something dark and hot moved in the darkness, and I raised the gun and fired at the tibicena charging from my right as rapidly as I could, though even with my night vision, all I could see were its red eyes, as if it somehow drew the darkness around itself like a cloak.
This was not the dog that I’d killed in my garage; this was the bigger, faster version I’d seen the possibility of when Coyote had taken me to visit Guayota’s house. As Coyote had promised, the bullets—and I knew from the bright spots that appeared and vanished on the tibicena’s body that I was hitting it—didn’t even slow it down. When I felt its too-hot breath, I dropped the gun and dove for my pitchfork.
And then we danced.
I could not trust my sight to tell me where it was, but the coyote knew, and I let her guide my steps. The pitchfork was a better weapon against the tibicena than the mop, crowbar, or wrench had been against Guayota. The long wooden handle didn’t heat up, and the metal ends didn’t burn as long as I didn’t leave them on the tibicena too long, because it had quickly become apparent that the tibicena, like Guayota, was a creature of fire, of the volcano where it had been birthed. As a test, I hit the beast hard, sinking the tines in a few inches, then jerking them out.
The wounds glowed red, and something bubbled out for a moment, but it took two seconds—I counted—for the holes to close. I didn’t dare hit it any harder, or I’d lose my weapon. The wounds also disturbed whatever it was that kept me from seeing the tibicena, and I caught a glimpse of it, huge and hairy.
Guayota was turning in a slow circle, ignoring my fight with his tibicena as he searched for something—Christy.
I danced faster.
For a few minutes, we were at a stalemate, the tibicena and I. I couldn’t hurt it, but I was moving too fast for it to hit me. As long as I could keep the speed up, and my coyote could sense its attacks, I was okay. A few minutes is a long time in a fight—and all I had to do was hold out long enough for Darryl to come.
But there were two tibicenas. I caught a glimpse of the second one when it slapped me on the head with its paw.
I stood on cracked blacktop in a school yard. There was a swing set in front of me, and Coyote sat on the only swing, moving it back and forth a few inches by wiggling his bare toes on the ground. It was one of those swings you see in parks and schools, with thick chains attached to a big, flat strip of rubber. The pink scrunchie was gone, his braid bound by a strip of white leather.
“I’m dreaming,” I said flatly.
“You’re dying,” corrected Coyote, lifting his head from where he’d been watching his feet, to meet my eyes. “Your neck is broken. Do you feel any different? I always wondered what other people feel when they are dying. For me it is usually like this—” He let go of the chains and clapped his hands once. “And I’m back to normal except not quite where I was a moment ago.”
“How do I kill Guayota?”
He shook his head and backed up slowly, letting the swing ride up his back. “You can’t. It isn’t possible. Besides, you are dying.” It didn’t sound like my death bothered him very much. He tilted his head, and said, “Do you know that burn on your cheek looks like war paint?”
“Gary thinks you’re just playing with us,” I told him.
Coyote nodded soberly as he hopped gracefully on the swing and let it carry him forward, then back. “Gary has reason to, but he doesn’t think like you do. He thinks—Coyote hates me and has me thrown in jail.” He leaned into the swing and used his legs and back to build momentum. “You think—what good comes from Gary Laughingdog in jail with the gift of prophecy he hates so much? Could it be that perhaps, just perhaps, both of Coyote’s children have a chance of surviving if they are working together?” He gave me a sly look. “Not that it wasn’t funny to see his face when he realized we’d stolen a police car, and he was parked in front of the police station.”
I thought about what he’d said. “Why did you show me the tibicenas?”
“Didn’t you want to save your friend Joel?”
“You answer a lot of questions with questions.”
“Do I?” His smile turned smug, and he leaped out of the swing, landing on his feet but letting his body fall forward until his hands rested lightly on the ground. He lowered his eyelids and suddenly there was nothing lighthearted, nothing funny about him, just a primordial fierceness that burned down my spine.