The Dark-Hunters (796 page)

Ren inclined his head respectfully to Choo Co La Tah. “I’ve been watching the signs.” During which he’d had a vision that still haunted him. Even with his eyes wide open, he saw her clearly. Felt her presence as if she were here, right now.

But he had no idea who
she
was. A mere slip of a woman with the courage of the cliff ogre, she’d come to him through the darkness. Dressed in yellow buckskin, she’d twisted up her dark brown hair and laced it with white feathers. Like the goddess who’d taken his soul, she’d knelt by his side while he lay wounded on the ground. Her sweet voice had soothed him as she sang in a language he hadn’t heard a woman speak in over two thousand years.

Death had held him tight until she’d laid her tiny hand to his bloody cheek. Leaning forward, she’d continued to sing, her breath falling against his skin. Her kind touch and soothing voice had driven away his pain until he felt nothing except the heat of her flesh against his. Her gaze had held his as she brushed a kiss to his lips. One so light, it felt like the wings of a hummingbird.

“I’m here for you,” she’d whispered an instant before she stabbed him straight through his heart. As the pain seared him, she’d laughed, then left him there to die alone.

He’d barely finished that vision before Choo Co La Tah had appeared in his backyard. For the last half hour, he’d been in solemn observance of the sky above, watching for something to belie what he knew was coming for them.

No one can stop a train.
The best they could do was bleed on the cattle scoop and tracks.

Ren stood up slowly in the middle of his backyard, then turned to face the ancient immortal. Centuries ago, they had been in the same clan together. Choo Co La Tah had once been his brother’s most trusted friend and advisor.

But things changed. And so did people. Too often you woke up to find that the person you were the closest to was the one you knew the least about. And as Ren had learned firsthand, the friend saturated with evil was the one thing to fear the most. While enemies could wound your body, an evil friend wounded the heart and mind—two things that could prove fatal.

“There’s no sign of the Keeper.” Choo Co La Tah glanced up at the Pleiades above them to where the first gate lay. The same stars Ren had been focused on. And the ones that held a special place in his heart. “What if she’s dead already?”

“A good friend once told me not to dread the future. One way or another, it would come. The trick was to meet it with open arms so that when it ran me over, it wouldn’t break anything.”

Choo smiled. “I was much younger and far more flexible in those days.”

Ren laughed at the ancient who physically appeared to be a well-muscled man in his early thirties. Dressed in a tan buckskin coat and jeans, Choo wore his long black hair braided down his back—the same style as Ren’s. And each of his eight fingers bore a silver ring that protected a sacred stone. Like him, Choo had once been the best of their clan’s warriors. They had gone to war together and they had fought against each other. Ironically, Ren had been the only one to ever defeat Choo Co La Tah.

Something he’d cheated to do.

Luckily, Choo didn’t hold a grudge.

Much.

Ren crossed his arms over his chest as he noticed how cool the night air had become. While he’d been meditating, he hadn’t paid attention to the dropping temperature. Now, the cold desert wind made itself known. “Besides, it’s not her death we should fear as much as the possibility that her stone is now in the hands of something it shouldn’t be.”

Choo Co La Tah nodded in agreement. “And that is what I fear most. The ghighau should have contacted me by now. Since she hasn’t…” His frustration was tangible. “I don’t even know who she is in this life.”

Neither did Ren. In order to protect her from all the predators who would kill her if they could, the Spirits had never allowed the Guardians to know her identity until it was a necessity. Where the Guardians were immortal, the Keeper wasn’t. A human child, she passed her sacred stone from mother to daughter, along with the story of their most sacred duty. Whenever the time came for the Reset, the Keeper always sent a dream to Choo Co La Tah to let him know who she was.

With two of the four Guardians slain, Choo and Ren’s brother Coyote, were the only ones left who could assist her in resetting their calendar and keeping the gates closed.

One Guardian who would protect her.

His brother who would kill her.

Ren, who had been a Guardian until his brother had stolen his position, now lay between the two. While he intended to stand and fight with Choo Co La Tah to the best of his abilities, he wasn’t sure what he would do against his brother. A part of him still hated Coyote with a vengeance that left him bitter. But beneath that was a guilt so profound that he wasn’t even angry that Coyote had tortured him last year when he had taken Ren captive.

How could he be when he’d done far more harm to Coyote?

Betrayals were never easy. When they came from a stranger, they were hateful. When they came from a friend, they were hurtful, and when they came from family …

They were vitriolic.

He clapped Choo Co La Tah on the back. “Look on the bright side. At least no one’s uncapped the Anikutani.”

“Yet, my dear boy. But remember, we still have eleven days to go. One ‘oh shit’ moment can undo all of our best efforts to protect this world, and there’s nothing more dangerous in this existence than a moron on a mission.”

Ren snorted at his optimism. “Sure there is, Choo.”

“And that would be?”

“One with an Internet connection and a six-pack of Red Bull.” But all joking aside, Choo Co La Tah was right. If anyone were to uncap the stone seal that kept Ren’s brethren imprisoned during the Time Untime …

He really was going to call in sick to work.

And find a hole to hide in.

At the mere thought of their return, his stomach tightened and chills ran up his arms as if his unconscious was trying to warn him that it was already too late to contemplate running. It felt as if the seal had been broken.

Stop. It’s the wind.

That he had no doubt about. But the question was, did that wind come from the desert?

Or from the Anikutani being released?

CHAPTER 2

December 10, 2012
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
4:00
A.M
.

Kateri Avani jerked in her sleep as her dreams tormented her. No longer a woman full grown, she was again a little girl sitting in her grandmother’s house, playing with the dolls her grandmother had made for her and her cousin Sunshine Runningwolf from the corn that grew in the garden out back. Barely twelve, Kateri brushed her small hand over the black corn-silk hair of the male doll. She didn’t know why, but she always made a small bow for him to hold on to.

Her grandmother sat beside her, at the old-fashioned red kitchen table, shelling peas as she spoke to Kateri in that ever-gentle tone that never failed to make her feel safe in a world that had been anything but. “You know, Ter, it’s a common saying among people that the love of money is the root of all evil. But nothing could be more wrong.” She dropped the strings and ends of the pea stalk into the compost bucket at her feet. “Before the invention of money, or even monetary systems, there was plenty of evil to go around.”

Not sure why her grandmother was telling her this, Kateri quirked a brow at the serious tone.

Her grandmother’s snow-white hair was braided and twisted around her head in an intricate coil Kateri had tried over and over to master. Unlike her grandmother’s, her hair always ended up in a mess that would leave her braids to fall loose as soon as she moved swiftly.

After pushing her glasses back with her knuckle, her grandmother paused her lecture to pull more unshelled stalks from the handmade straw basket on the table and put them into the silver pan she held in her lap. Pointing at Kateri with one of the long pea stalks, she pierced her with those golden eyes that held all the fire of a strong, spirited medicine woman. “Heed my warning, child. Neither money nor greed destroy humanity, and they definitely don’t ruin the life of a single individual. Rather, it’s something much more sinister. Those are merely the symptoms of the true disease that can rot you from the inside out.”

Kateri’s eyes widened. “What rots people, Grammy?”

“Envy,” she said in a chilling tone. “It is the deadliest of all things, child. It was what motivated the first crime known to mankind, when brother struck down brother and left him dead for no reason other than the fact that he thought his brother was more favored. On the surface, it’s such a beautiful word. But like all true evil, that beauty is deceptive and it lures the unwary in for capture and ruin. Just like the devil’s whirlpool, before you realize it, you’re drowning in it and can’t escape it no matter how hard you try.”

Her heart thumped hard in her chest. Those words scared her. She never, ever wanted to feel it. The problem was, she didn’t know what “it” was. “What does ‘envy’ mean?”

Her grandmother snapped the peas apart, her movements more frenetic than before. “From the Latin
invidi,
which means to cause resentment or to calculate ill will toward another, envy is that inability to feel happiness at someone else’s good fortune or to wish them well even though they deserve it. It’s when you begrudge someone their moment in the sun or just the fact that they have a life that you think is better or easier than yours. But heed my words, child, we all have more than our share of pains and sorrow. Embarrassments and things that haunt us. From that, no one is ever immune, no matter how good or perfect a life you think they live. Shame and hurt spare no one.”

“I would never do such a thing, Grammy,” Kateri assured her. “I know better.”

Her grandmother smiled kindly. “I know, baby. But the warning bears repeating. It’s so easy to fall into envy’s grasp, and to let that hatred and bitterness destroy your own happiness.” She handed Kateri several raw peas to eat while she continued shelling them. “When I was a girl about your age, my grandmother told me a story that her grandfather had told her. Even though I was young when I heard it, it has stayed with me throughout my entire life.”

Kateri crunched the peas while she listened. She always loved her grandmother’s tales.

“One day, a young boy went up to his grandfather, who was an old Cherokee chief. ‘Edudi?’ the boy asked. ‘Why are you so sad?’

“The old chief bit his lip and rubbed his belly as if his stomach pained him unmercifully. ‘There is a terrible fight inside me, Uhgeeleesee,’ the chief said sternly. ‘One that will not let me sleep or give me any peace.’”

She touched a pea stalk to Kateri’s nose as she mimicked the boy’s wide-eyed wonder. “‘A fight, Grandfather? I don’t understand. What kind of fight is inside you?’”

Kateri stole another handful of peas from her grandmother’s pan.

“The old chief knelt in front of the boy to explain. ‘Deep inside my heart, I have two wolves. Each strong enough to devour the other, they are locked in constant war. One is evil through and through. He is revenge, sorrow, regret, rage, greed, arrogance, stupidity, superiority, envy, guilt, lies, ego, false pride, inferiority, self-doubt, suspicion, and resentment. The other wolf is everything kind. He is made of peace, blissful tranquility, wisdom, love and joy, hope and humility, compassion, benevolence, generosity, truth, faith, and empathy. They circle each other inside my heart and they fight one another at all times. Day and night. There is no letup. Not even while I slumber.’

“The boy’s eyes widened as he sucked his breath in sharply. ‘How horrible for you.’ His grandfather shook his head at those words and tapped the boy’s chest right where his own heart was located. ‘It’s not just horrible for me. This same fight is also going on inside you and every single person who walks this earth with us.’”

Kateri touched her own heart as she wondered if those wolves were inside her, too.

“Those words terrified the little boy,” her grandmother continued. “‘So tell me, Grandfather, which of the wolves will win this fight?’ The old chief smiled at his grandson and he cupped his young cheek before he answered with one simple truth. ‘Always the one we feed.’”

Her grandmother’s voice echoed through Kateri’s dream as she tried her best to wake herself.
Be careful what you feed, child. For that beast will follow you home and live with you until you either make a bed for it to stay, or find the temerity to drive it out.

But her grandmother wasn’t through with her warnings. She took Kateri’s hand and pulled her forward through time. Into a place that was eerie and foreign, and at the same time, familiar. Like she’d been here before and forgotten it.

Or banished it.

Though the sweeping winds were hot, they made her blood run cold with dread—as if there was something innately evil here. Something that wanted her dead. All around them, stalagmites and stalactites formed misshapen beasts that added to her discomfort. The red earthen walls reminded her of a Martian landscape. More than that, those walls held sketches of past battles between warriors and a feathered snake that rose up above them, breathing fire from its nostrils as it tried to defeat them.

“This is where the end begins.”

Before she could ask her grandmother what she meant, Kateri saw a shadow move across the floor. It grabbed her from behind and jerked her back against a rock-hard chest. She felt swallowed by the size of the man who held her with an ease that terrified her. Dressed in a white linen shirt, black vest, and jeans, he had long ebony hair that fell to the middle of his back. Dark eyes flashed in a face so perfectly sculpted that he didn’t appear real.

Familiar with this stranger, she relaxed.

Until he spoke.

“For all time,” he whispered in her ear an instant before he plunged a knife deep into her heart, then threw her to the ground to die. Her last sight was of him turning into a crow so that he could fly away from her.

Shaking and scared, Kateri woke up in a cold sweat to the sound of her alarm clock blaring. At 4:30 in the morning, her bedroom was still pitch dark, but even so she sensed a presence near her bed. More than that, she smelled the faint scent of peppermint and Jurgen’s lotion.