Chaos Bites Part 21

"Who do you think?"

The voice was deep and aged, with the odd cadence I a.s.sociated with those who spoke English as their second language.

I turned back. The coyote remained the only living thing besides me within earshot.

CHAPTER 20.

"I don't need to ask who sent you," he said.

A talking coyote. Terrific.

"No?" I couldn't seem to manage any more than that.

The coyote glanced behind me. "Where's Sawyer?"

"Actually, Ruthie Kane told me to come."

"Ruthie." His voice lowered to a caress. "How is she?"

"Dead," I blurted.

The coyote yipped as if he'd been clipped in the b.u.t.t with buckshot. "Impossible!"

"Not really."

"Someone with Ruthie's power never really dies."

"True that," I muttered. "She is dead, but she still . . ." I waved my hand. "Speaks."

"To you?"

"Not lately."

The coyote tilted his head again, studying me. Then his gaze dipped to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "You should put your clothes back on. It's been . . ." His head canted in the opposite direction, though his eyes stayed right where they were. "Decades since I saw a naked woman."

I glanced down. c.r.a.p. No wonder he'd been staring. Quickly I turned, earning a rumble of appreciation that I chose to ignore, and threw everything back on.

"You're Sani?" I asked as I faced the coyote again.

"Isn't that who you came here to see?"

"Question with a question," I murmured. "Not really an answer."

"I am Sani," he said, and dipped his head in a bow that would have been Old World, if he hadn't had a snout. "Now, where's Sawyer?"

"He's also a little . . . dead."

Sani blew air through his nose derisively. "Impossible."

"Do you know what impossible means?"

The coyote's eyes narrowed. "Skinwalkers do not die."

"Unless they choose to."

That shut him up. For a minute.

"Sawyer chose to die?"

I nodded, afraid my voice would break if I spoke. "Must have been a woman." He eyed me again. Again, I remained silent. "How did you come to possess the fetish if Sawyer's dead?"

"Magic."

Sani snorted.

"You're a talking coyote and you don't believe in magic? By the way, why are you a talking coyote?"

"Once, long ago, I trusted the wrong man."

"You and about a hundred thousand women a year," I muttered.

He ignored me. "My home was stolen from me along with my human soul."

"How do you steal a human soul?"

"By stealing the icon where it rests when the human is in coyote form."

"This?" I held up the carved turquoise. "You're saying Sawyer stole your soul?"

"And my mountain."

"Mount Taylor?" The coyote dipped his snout. "Why?"

"Because he could."

I wanted to argue, but that did kind of sound like Sawyer.

"I've been told the Navajo don't trust the coyote."

Sani opened his mouth in a doggy grin. "What's your point?"

"Why would you become one?"

"Unlike Sawyer, some of us have little choice over what we become. I dreamed of the coyote when I was a boy. I embraced the form of my spirit animal and the magic it brought to me."

"Black magic," I said.

"We take what we are given."

"Oh, I'm sure you took it," I said, and I knew exactly how. I couldn't throw stones. I'd murdered for my magic, too.

"How did you end up on Inyan Kara?" I asked.

"I was banished from the Dinetah, from the Glittering World, from the home I loved and the mountain where I was born. I had to go somewhere, and this place called to me."

"I hear it's magic, too. For the Sioux."

"Magic is magic."

Not really, but I decided to let that pa.s.s.

"Weren't the Sioux annoyed?" They certainly hadn't taken kindly to the whites wandering all over these hills.

"A bit. But they had bigger problems than a trespa.s.sing Navajo. By the time they were free to deal with me, I was as much a part of the legend of Inyan Kara as they were."

"How many years have you been a coyote?"

"More years than I was ever a man."

"Ruthie said you couldn't leave Inyan Kara."

"Ruthie is often right." He tilted his nose into a bright beam of sunlight that reached through the trees, then huffed. "It doesn't matter." He shook his coat, giving the impression of a deep s.h.i.+ver. "Coyotes are skittish, and I've been one so long people make me nervous."

"What about me?"

His eyes, so dark a brown they nearly blended into his silky black fur, met mine. "We both know you aren't a person."

"No? What am I?"

"I would guess, since Ruthie has spoken to you, that you are the present leader of the light, and considering that tattoo on your neck, I'd say you are also a skinwalker."

As well as a dhampir, a vampire, a psychic, and a phoenix, but I figured he knew enough, so I shrugged. "How is it that you can talk?"

Question with a question worked both ways.

"Sawyer cast a spell, placed a curse."

"He made you a talking coyote? Why?"

"I was an outcast. I was never to fit in anywhere, with anyone or anything. I could not become human without my soul, but I wasn't a coyote, either. Not if I could talk."

Wow. Some curse.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I trusted. I taught Sawyer all that I knew, and he used that knowledge against me."

There had to be more to it than that. But what if there wasn't? What if Sawyer had learned all he could from the Old One then taken his home and his soul and banished him to Inyan Kara just because he could? Sawyer had done a lot of things that were borderline. His right-and-wrong radar was not exactly spot-on. I blamed his mother.

On the other hand- "Who did you kill?" I whispered.

Sani lifted his lip and showed me his teeth again. "We do not ask such things."

"Maybe you don't."

"Ask what you like. I will not answer."

I decided it didn't matter what Sani had done or even who he'd killed. I still had to do what I'd come here to do-raise Sawyer, get answers to my questions, then deal with the results. I could worry about the truth later. Or, since Sawyer was dead, not at all.

"I told him one day he'd need my help," Sani murmured. "And the only way he'd get it would be to give me back myself."

I held up the fetish again. "This is payment."

"Now you need only tell me for what."

"I want you to raise Sawyer's ghost."

"You can raise him yourself. All you must do is kill someone you love."

"Already did."

His eyes became shrewd. "Ruthie or Sawyer?"

Before I could point out that we didn't ask such things, my mouth got the better of me and I snapped, "I'd never hurt Ruthie."

The coyote's mouth opened, a grin of sorts. "I'm beginning to like you for something other than your very nice b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Tell me more."

"No," I said shortly. One thing I would not discuss was Sawyer and how I'd killed him.

Sani emitted a disappointed sigh. "If you sacrificed someone you love, you're a sorcerer and a shape-s.h.i.+fter, a true skinwalker. You can raise a ghost."

"I tried. Couldn't do it."

"Odd," Sani murmured.

"I've never raised anyone by myself before. I thought you could watch. Tell me if I'm doing something wrong."

Sani cast me a quick glance. "You know that sometimes a boost of power is needed."

I flinched. "Yes."