WINDWALKER (THE PROPHECY SERIES) (3 page)

It wasn’t a tornado because they could see the top and the bottom of the whirlwind moving violently and independently of the storm. It appeared to be targeting the men one at a time, which should not have been possible.

Even as Wallis doubted his own perception, he watched one man thrown backward into a light post with such force that his feet and head touched behind his back. Then another was lifted a good thirty feet up and unceremoniously dropped, splattering brain matter all over the street. The clothes on another man came off like a snake shedding skin, and then the wind went deeper.

Pomeroy groaned and then grabbed his partner’s arm. “Oh hell, Wallis. Look! Look! Son-of-a-bitch! It was the wind that peeled the bastard’s skin. It was the wind! How fast does it have to blow to make that happen?”

Wallis’s gaze was still fixed on the screen as the wind moved toward the woman pinned against the building by its force. The whirlwind was still turning, but when it stopped forward motion, and appeared to be hovering, Wallis gasped.

“That’s not fucking possible.”

Then just like that, she was gone. As she had said, the whirlwind took her. But how? Where? All of a sudden it was nowhere in sight. Not on any of the tapes. They should have been able to see it moving away – not completely disappear. What in hell were they to make of this? And, it still didn’t explain how she got to the hotel.

He had a feeling she knew more than she was telling, but whatever happened to the gang members, it was the storm and circumstance that had done them in.

He reached for the remote and turned off all the screens.

“So does this close the case?” Pomeroy asked.

Wallis shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, it does. We know exactly how the nine men died, including the one she fought with. She took one down and then the storm hit. She lucked out there, or it would have been a different story.”

“But how did she get to the hotel?” Pomeroy asked.

“Hell, maybe she flew like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I don’t know. If she doesn’t remember, it still doesn’t matter. Our job is finished here. Mother Nature took care of the criminal element in this case. ”

“Want me to get the Captain?”

Wallis nodded. “He needs to see this. He’ll be the one to make the call, but there’s no doubt about it. Layla Birdsong is guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

****

Doctor Toussaint was making morning rounds as Layla was shoving breakfast around on the plate. He walked into her room just as she was trying to take a drink of juice through swollen lips.

“You need a straw for that,” he said, and yanked the straw out of her water and poked it into the cup of juice.

Layla took a sip and then set it aside.

“Thank you.”

Toussaint nodded. “Let’s check out your eye,” he said, nodding with what she hoped was satisfaction. “The swelling is beginning to subside. Can you see anything out of it?”

“A little, but it’s still blurry.”

“That should clear up as your eye continues to heal. Let’s see how your stitches look, shall we?”

His nurse removed the bandages on her belly, as well as the ones on the back of her arm.

“Looking good,” he said. “The seepage has stopped. No signs of infection.” He scanned her chart as the nurse began applying fresh bandages. “Slight elevation in temperature but that’s to be expected. How’s the pain tolerance? We can up the meds a bit if you’re uncomfortable.”

“I’m managing. So how long do I stay here?”

He smiled. “I can understand your lack of empathy for our fine city, but you’re going to have to bear with us for a few more days.”

“I have a job to go back to on Monday.”

He frowned. “Not this Monday. Call whoever you have to call and tell them you have been delayed.”

She thought of the school on the Navajo reservation and her first grade students. Although teachers were supposed to start work on Monday getting classrooms ready, classes for the fall semester didn’t begin for a couple of weeks. Surely she would be well enough by then to work.

“Yes, I’ll make some calls,” she said, including one to her grandfather.

She had been calling him every day since her arrival in New Orleans. He was probably worried that he hadn’t heard from her today; such turmoil from an innocent conference on early childhood education.

She waited until the doctor was gone and the food tray removed and then pulled the phone into her lap. The last thing she wanted to do was cry when she heard her grandfather’s voice, but they were all the family each other had left, and why she was in Arizona teaching on the reservation instead of back in Okmulgee, Oklahoma where she’d been raised.

Thinking of Oklahoma made her think of Donny Boland, the man she’d once dated. When the need to move to Arizona to take care of her grandfather arose, Donny got mad. He told her to put the old man in a home somewhere and stay there with him. He kept saying life was for the living and her grandfather’s life was nearly over. Why give up her future to babysit an old man?

She’d been stunned by his callousness, and then so angry she’d tossed him out of her life and told him never to come back. Even now, she regretted ever thinking she loved such a jerk, let alone having sex with the man. It still made her feel dirty.

However, today was about the present, and Donny Boland was in the past. She took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts and her emotions, and made the call.

****

George Begay had been sitting by the telephone since before daylight, waiting for his granddaughter’s call. He knew she was in trouble, just like he’d known the day his wife of fifty-seven years would die. When the phone finally rang, he was relieved. One way or another, he would know what had happened. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t even wait to see if it was actually Layla who was calling.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

Layla sighed. She should have known it would be so. Grandfather always knew when something was wrong.

“It’s a long story,” she said. “Just know that I am okay… or at least I will be.”

Once he heard her voice, the fear slid from his heart.

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes, but I’ll heal.”

He focused in on her voice and closed his eyes. Within seconds he saw men and blood and wind.

“You were attacked?”

It was the fear in his voice that was her undoing. She tried to hide it, but her voice was trembling as she began to explain.

“My car broke down on the way back to the hotel. It wasn’t far and I started to walk it. But it was late and there was a gang. I thought I would die, but I did not.”

“You fought.”

The lump in her throat was getting bigger. “Yes, I fought, and I killed the one who cut me.”

The silence was telling. George Begay did not trust the white men or their courts. “Are you in trouble?”

“No. There were nine of them and only one of me.”

“How did you get away?”

She thought of the whirlwind and the spirit that was within it and knew it was something that could not be explained, especially over the phone.

“There was a storm. I will tell you more when I come home.”

He closed his eyes and concentrated on her voice, then struggled against the shock of what he saw. It was not a storm, and they both knew it.

“When will that be?”

“I’m not sure. The doctor is going to make me stay a while.”

George grunted softly. “You are hurt worse than you are saying. I will call the school and tell them to look for a substitute.”

“Thank you, Grandfather. I was about to ask if you would do that for me.”

“You will give me the name of your hotel and the phone number to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“Because I am coming there to be with you.”

Layla frowned. “There’s no need, Grandfather. They’re taking care of me. When I’m well enough, I will come home.”

“No. You are going to need me. It wasn’t a storm, Layla, and you know it, but the storm is coming. You are going to need all of your people before this is over.”

Layla’s heart skipped a beat. Everyone on the rez accepted that George Begay knew things others did not and she could do no less.

“What are you saying, Grandfather? What did you see?”

“That was no storm.”

The skin crawled on the back of her neck. “It was a whirlwind.”

“No, granddaughter. It was a Windwalker. You have been chosen. I don’t yet know why, but you will be in danger. I will come. Tell me where you are.”

She gave him the information, because there was no refusing this man once he’d set his mind to a task. And she didn’t want to think about what she’d heard in his voice, and she didn’t want to know what a Windwalker was. Not yet. She needed to heal before she let herself go there again.

****

The local newspapers were covering the story of the gang members’ deaths, trying to tie their ethnic mix into a battle of rival gangs. Even in a city rife with crime, the fact that all nine of them had died in such brutal fashion was one for the books. A local television station had a brief interview of the cab driver who’d stumbled onto the bodies after dropping off a fare. Someone had leaked the fact that there was a survivor, and now the media was all over the Police Chief during his news conference.

“Chief Warwick! Chief Warwick! What about the woman? What’s her name? How did she survive the storm when the others did not? Is it true she killed one of them in self-defense?”

The questions were coming at him right and left, but he’d been through far more controversial issues without losing his cool, and this was no exception.

“Yes, there was a survivor and she has been completely exonerated of any wrong-doing. There were nine of them and one of her. She fought back, but it was ultimately the onset of the storm that turned the tide for her.”

“About the storm. Why was it so centralized? The damage is very obviously contained within this two block area.”

Warwick laughed. “Seriously, Stanley? You’re asking me to explain weather patterns? You need to be asking those questions of a weather expert, not a cop.”

He disarmed them with laughter and brought a quick end to the questioning. After viewing the footage, the less he had to comment about this incident, the better. They’d run the tapes by the local district attorney who’d come to the same conclusion the law had. The gang assaulted a woman who’d fought back. The storm was the turning point. How the woman got back to the hotel and into her room, when she’d left her purse and room key behind, was beside the point. As far as the law was concerned, guilty parties had already been punished, and as soon as the Coroner confirmed the identities, the bodies would be released to family members.

Case closed.

Until a copy of one of the confiscated tapes was aired on the evening news, and another wound up on YouTube that they didn’t know existed, and Layla Birdsong became marketable goods.

After that, they came out of the woodwork.

Paranormal buffs claiming it was a demon that had interfered with the attack, while others claiming it the work of voodoo.

Crazies gathering outside the hospital who were getting ‘messages’ from outer space that Layla Birdsong was from another world, and her ‘people’ had come to save her.

She’d gone to bed in a state of shock at what was happening, and was still big news when she woke up. By noon, the crowd outside the hotel had grown to such proportions that it became a public nuisance, and the police had been dispatched.

Layla stood at the window overlooking the parking lot, watching as the police dispersed the crowd from hospital grounds. Instead of leaving, they simply congregated on the other side of the street in growing numbers. She couldn’t help wondering where this would end - how it would end.

I will come for you.

“When?” she whispered. “What is going to happen to me before you do?”

****

It was just after noon when a woman walked into the hospital. After a couple of lies and ten dollars to an orderly, she located Layla Birdsong’s room. The first thing out of her mouth was begging Layla to pray for her son who was dying from cancer.

Shocked, Layla rang for help and the floor nurse called hospital security.

Layla was almost asleep when it happened again.

She didn’t actually hear the door open, but she was aware that the noise from the hall had just become louder. She opened her eyes just as a skinny white man with dreadlocks slipped into the room, holding a pair of scissors.

Layla flashed on the gang and the man with the knife, and panicked. She rolled toward the far side of the bed to get away, tangled her feet in the sheets, and fell out of bed screaming. A metal tray hit the floor with a crash. The pitcher of water on her tray table went flying, and still she was screaming.

The man’s expression was a mixture of shock and dismay. “No, lady, no! Don’t be afraid!” he yelled. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not gonna hurt you. I just need a piece of your hair.”

The orderlies took him down, the police put him in handcuffs and hauled him away, leaving Layla with three torn stitches in her belly, and two on the back of her arm. By the time the stitches were fixed and fresh bandages in place, she was in tears again.

Even though a policeman now stood guard outside her room, she was afraid to close her eyes. It wasn’t until a nurse came in and administered a sedative that she finally passed out.

“
Walk with me,” he whispered, and when he took her hand, her heart stopped, then started up again in rhythm with his. She felt his energy surge through her as surely as she felt the Arizona wind upon her face. Within the space of a heartbeat, they were standing on a mesa overlooking a part of the Navajo reservation.

“What’s happening to me?”

He laid his hand over her breasts where her heart beat was the strongest.

“I am happening.”

“Why me?”

“Because you are strong enough to do what must be done.”