“Atticus? What kind o’ name is that?”
“Ever read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee?”
“Naw, but I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, there’s a man in it named Atticus Finch. Brilliant man—and a brave one. Stood for justice in the face of sheer stupidity, despite what it cost him and his family. I know he’s just fictional, but he was the kind of man I’d like to be. It’s the kind of name that leaves you room to grow. I need a name like that. Reminds me that I’m not perfect.”
Frank sounded mildly incredulous. “You need a reminder of that?”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “Sometimes I get to feeling pretty smug, because I’ve managed to dodge the wrath of a few gods. But days like this remind me I’m not all that hot. And the name helps. No matter how old I get, I keep running into people who are smarter, nobler, and kinder. I really ought to start listening to them and telling my pride to shut up. I had gods tell me not to go to Asgard. I had witches tell me not to go to Flagstaff. You told me this plan wouldn’t work. But I barreled ahead anyway for my own reasons. I still have plenty of growing to do.”
“How old are you, anyway? Twenty-two?”
“I know I don’t look it, but I’m older than you, Frank. Quite a bit older.”
Frank grunted and considered my original question. “All right, Atticus who’s older ’n me. The only reason I can think of for them leavin’ like that is that they’re cookin’ up some other way to kill us. Some way they think will work better, more surefire. Because there’s one thing about those caltrops, something I didn’t think about before: Those skinwalkers are gonna have to look where they step if they wanna get through ’em. And if they have to do that, then they can’t be lookin’ at us at the same time. That ain’t somethin’ they’d be willin’ to risk, not with you standin’ there with a badass sword in your hand and me with a gun in mine. So they’re gonna come back soon with some way to get around the caltrops.”
“Of course!” I said, a grin splitting my face. “Frank, you’re a genius!”
“Hell yes I am. What are you talkin’ about?”
“They have a bird form,” I explained. “Don’t know what kind of bird, but I bet they went to get their bird skins. Or feathers. Whatever.”
Frank peered up at me. “How do you know that?”
“My hound and I tracked them the other day, after that first night’s attack. Found bird tracks. Big ones.”
Frank frowned. “Only big birds around these parts are carrion birds. Crows and ravens and shit like that.”
“These weren’t crows. Didn’t have that smell.”
“That smell? You can tell birds apart by smell?”
“Well, yeah. I’m a shape-shifter, Frank.” A new plan gelled in my head, and I carefully resheathed Moralltach before removing the scabbard altogether as a prelude to removing my clothes. Once that process began, Frank required an explanation.
“Uh, why are you gettin’ na**d?” he asked.
“Can’t change forms with jeans and a shirt on, can I? Clothes get in the way when you want to fly.”
“Are you shittin’ me right now?” He rose from his squatting position.
“Nope. I’m even starting to feel smug again. Switch places with me, Frank, need you on my left.”
“What? Why?”
“Are you left-handed or right-handed?”
“Right.”
“That’s what I thought, so I need you on my left.”
“You ain’t makin’ no sense at all,” he said as he exchanged positions with me.
“Well, trust me, Frank. Hate to throw your own words back at you, but I’m not just a dumbass pretty boy. Sometimes I’m kind of smart and pretty. I have a plan.”
“Hope it works better than the last one.”
“Me too. All right, tell me what kind of big birds you see out here besides ravens and crows.”
“Vultures. They call ’em turkey vultures, to be exact.”
“Yes, that works. And they’re pretty big?”
“Damn big.”
“And they’re black, I’m guessing.”
“You guess right. Heads are red, but rest of ’em is black.”
“So that’s their plan, Frank. They’re going to put down their bobcat skins and put on their vulture skins, and then they’re going to glide right over those caltrops and drop down on top of us like airborne ninjas.”
Frank looked up. “Shit, you’re right. It’s damn sneaky, and it’s precisely what an air spirit from First World would want to do.”
“And once they’re in this circle with us, we don’t stand a chance of matching their speed.”
“That’s for sure,” Frank agreed. “If they get in here, we got ourselves a snake’s chance in a typing contest.”
“So this is what we do.” I explained my new plan, which involved him getting back down on his haunches and placing his right arm as flat as possible on the ground.
“You know I ain’t no spring chicken, right?” he said.
“Spring just this once for me, Frank.”
Frank’s eyes were on mine but then shifted over my right shoulder to the northeast, past the looming wall of the northern butte. “They’re coming. At least one of ’em is. Don’t see the other one.” He squatted down as I instructed, and I inched forward so that my toes and the pads of my feet rested on his right forearm. The bulk of my weight was still on my heels, but I could shift forward in an instant.
“Don’t cut yourself on the sword,” I reminded him, though I was the one holding it at the moment.
“I’ll remember,” Frank assured me.
Grasping Moralltach firmly in my right hand, I looked up to the sky to spot the skinwalkers. The stars are so bright outside cities; it’s like those allergy commercials where they apply a blur filter and then wipe it away to imply that the entire world will be better if you swallow their pills. It is naturally clear like that inside the boundaries of the Navajo Nation—no drugs necessary. And so I spotted the skinwalker after only a few seconds’ search.
His companion—or, rather, his brother—was there too, spiraling down onto our position on the south face of the southernmost defile of the Tyende Mesa, and once they had descended far enough, I asked Frank if he was ready.
“Ready,” he affirmed.
“Now,” I said, as I dropped Moralltach behind me and triggered the charm that would shift me to a great horned owl. My feet turned into talons and my arms into wings. Frank rose from his squat and lifted his arm over his head, effectively launching me skyward before the nearest skinwalker had time to register what was happening.
Turkey vultures, for all their bulk, are not built for aerial combat. They are scavengers, built to eat dead meat quickly and contract few (if any) diseases from digesting said meat. They are constructed to glide for eons in search of immobile snack foods. So when they encounter a flying predator used to snatching extremely mobile prey like rabbits and mice, they are hopelessly outclassed—even if they have First World spirits juicing up their systems.
I tangled with one of the vultures and it screeched in a combination of rage and astonishment, like a high school boy might when a teacher boldly confiscates his bag of Cheetos. It tore at me with its talons and pecked at me with its beak even as I tore at it—I felt bits of rib meat and my stomach being torn away—but I activated my healing charm and did my best to get hold of its neck with my talons. It thrashed desperately; its wingspan was as great as mine, if not greater, and we began to fall, since neither of us could beat the air sufficiently when we were beating each other. But I managed to roll around to the top and lock on to its neck with one taloned foot and yank upward, and this had a singular, unexpected effect on the creature. The vulture skin made a sucking, popping sound and the human fell from underneath it, screaming, to fall headfirst and splatter wetly on the mesa strewn with poisoned nails.
It did not immediately move afterward and pretend that nothing had happened. It did not, in fact, move at all. Victory! I thought, since the vulture skin was still in my talons. I let it drop harmlessly onto Tyende Mesa. But the other skinwalker saw his brother broken on the ground and cried out, abandoning subterfuge and diving straight for Frank, perceiving him to be the softer target.
They didn’t have unnatural speed, I saw, in the air: They could move only as fast as the air would allow the physiognomy of their forms. As bobcats they could take advantage of unnatural musculature. As vultures they could rely on aerodynamics only—their stronger shoulders would allow them to flap more than vultures normally do, perhaps, but it wouldn’t allow them to fly at peregrine-falcon speeds.
The hataałii saw the skinwalker coming and thrust Moralltach high above his head to make landing difficult. I tacked about and adjusted my course before diving after it. Owls dive faster than vultures; they are designed to do so. I hit him at an angle from above, talons first, and bore him to the ground, barely missing the blade of Moralltach. The creature shrieked and began to bubble and buck bizarrely underneath my grasp. It was more than I could hold on to as an owl, so I shifted directly to a wolfhound and quickly moved to lock my jaws on the back of its neck. As I did so, it shifted as well, from a vulture to a human with the vulture skin and feathers lying on top, but it seemed involuntary. My cold-iron aura, I realized, was causing the transformation to the natural human form; that was why the first one had fallen out of his skin once I’d clutched him in my talons and why the skin of the bobcat had rippled as it chewed on my neck before Coyote shot it.
The neck I was after wasn’t so scrawny anymore but was still within the compass of my jaws. The problem now was that there were human limbs and musculature to deal with, and he had a speed and will to wield them viciously. Even as Frank yelled a “Hyaaah!” and brought Moralltach clumsily down across the back of the skinwalker, the creature’s left arm buffeted me backward. This gave him time to roll over and kick Frank powerfully in the gut before I could descend upon him again. Frank staggered backward, Moralltach sailing from his hand as he reflexively sought to cushion his fall and protect his head. He fell outside our circle and onto the waiting caltrops—or so I imagined, judging by peripheral vision and what I heard, which was a dismayed “Shit!” I was too busy tearing after the skinwalker’s throat. The creature punched my ribs so mightily with his right hand that I heard them crack.
In the movies, you go flying away into the night after a shot like that, landing ruinously against a rock or cement wall, and somehow your mere flesh and bone shatters said rock or cement and you get up afterward and brush dust off your shoulders as the soundtrack swells dramatically. In reality, what happens is that your lungs empty of all air and you fall over—and if you do fly into a rock wall, it will shatter your bones long before you shatter it.
My healing charm was already working on the flesh the other skinwalker had torn as a bird, but it did nothing to reinflate my lungs. As I lay gasping, the cursed thing—Robert or Ray Peshlakai, if Sophie was right—staggered to his feet to finish me off. Instead, he collapsed on top of me, further injuring my ribs as black ruin suffused his entire twitching body, spreading from the wound that Frank had delivered with Moralltach. Unlike my Fourth World poisons, the Fae enchantment on the sword was more than the First World spirit could heal—Fae magic being as alien to First World as the other way around. He died with a hoarse cry of terror, and I think I might have joined him—partly because it was the only sound I could manage and partly because watching a head shrivel and turn black right next to yours is profoundly disturbing.
I couldn’t kick him off me, nor could I struggle out from underneath him, injured as I was. I would have to shift back to human to help Frank and call Granuaile for help.
Shifting with bone injuries is never a great idea, but I didn’t see what choice I had. The transition nearly turned the cracks in my ribs to breaks, and my half-strangled cry of pain, when added to all the other cries in the night, caused Granuaile to call out from the hogan.
“Atticus? You all right?”
I didn’t answer right away. I would be fine eventually, but I was worried about Frank and trying to recover my breath. He rolled back into the circle, several caltrops sticking out of his back and perhaps more elsewhere that I couldn’t see. His right hand fumbled into his back pocket for the antidote I’d given him.
“Yes!” I managed to say, trying to encourage him. I shoved the blackened corpse off me with revulsion and winced at the pain the exertion caused. I began to crawl toward Frank. His hand was shaking as he took the box out of his pocket. He dropped it to the ground in front of him and gasped—his breath was wheezy and unsteady already.
“Let me help, Frank,” I said, shutting down my pain to allow me to move faster. He had three caltrops lodged in his back and I yanked these out as quickly as I could, being careful about the points, then reached for the antidote. The box was mashed up a bit, and that worried me. I remembered how he’d fallen. “No, no, no …” I breathed, my fingers scrabbling at the box to get it open. The syringe inside was broken, crushed when Frank’s full weight had fallen on it.
Frank’s elbow trembled and unlocked on him and he collapsed, then rolled over, clutching his chest. His breath came in short gasps and he was in obvious distress.
“Hold on, Frank, I’m going to try something,” I said, discarding the useless antidote. I reached for the side of his neck, intending to heal him directly in spite of the risk to myself—if I caused him any harm while using magic, my own life would be forfeit. He clutched at my arm and the ghost of a smile passed his lips as his eyes flicked to the dead skinwalker.