“Yeah,” he said.
“Great. Need some of those.”
I dumped a whole container of the lamp oil over the stakes and then started handing them up to Granuaile after she got herself perched on a chair.
“Just sort of arrange them in the center of the roof area,” I said. “They need to be touching one another.” I would have preferred to bind the stakes to the SUV’s roof so that they would point upward, but the manufacturer had lined the roof with a synthetic material I couldn’t work with, and it was impossible to get in there and tear it out. The stakes would simply have to serve as kindling.
“I can’t get them to always lie on top of one another,” Granuaile reported. “We need to throw some in from the other side too. Plus a lot of them are rolling to the front, because it’s not exactly level in there.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll get over there,” and I went to get another chair. Sophie protested.
“Look, we heard your dire warnings, and if we die it’s not your fault, okay?” I said. Sophie threw up her hands and turned her back on us, muttering about idiots.
“Hey, Mr. Collins,” Frank interjected, “whatever you’re gonna do, you might wanna hurry. They ain’t buyin’ what I’m sellin’.”
I hopped up on the chair and asked Granuaile to hop down from hers and hand me some stakes. No sooner was I up there than the SUV shuddered. The skinwalkers had leapt on top of it again, taking advantage of the dead space in the Blessing Way ward. This time they’d be ready for unexpected shifts and were hanging on; taking such care would slow them down, but they were also determined to rip through the chassis to get to us.
I tossed a few more stakes in the window and saw what Granuaile meant. Most of the stakes had rolled down to where the roof met the front windshield. But I could fix that, since no one could see what I was doing. I bound the stakes together end to end and then crosswise so that they spanned the roof in a rough grid-or a grill would be a better image. A grill primed with kerosene. A tearing noise and starlight above me indicated that the skinwalkers had punctured the cabin. They were wrestling with the seats now.
“Need a lighter, quick!” I said. “Or matches!” This was one of those times I wished Druids could do neato things with fire. Maybe I should try to figure out how to make friends with a phosphorous elemental.
Ben and Frank patted themselves down helplessly and looked around. Granuaile didn’t have anything, I knew. “How’d you guys get the lanterns lit without matches?” I asked.
The driver’s seat disappeared with a shriek of metal, and a skinwalker in human form dropped down onto the roof. I saw a flash of orange eyes and ducked as he took a swing at me through the window.
“Here!” Someone pressed a lighter into my hand. It was Sophie. I didn’t have time to thank her. I bobbed back up and socked my left hand through the window, not caring if I hit him or not. He dodged back easily and began to turn, considering an exit out the passenger side, because the confined space wasn’t to his advantage. And then I lit the nearest stake and watched the flames travel along my improvised grill, even as the second skinwalker landed next to the first.
They burned and screamed and climbed on top of each other in an attempt to escape, which only made it worse. They eventually exited through the roof and forgot, in their haste, that the roof of the hogan was still warded. The Blessing Way burned them again and they tumbled off the hogan, howling.
Frank grinned at me as their cries of pain faded; they were clearly retreating.
“Think that got ’em,” he said.
“For the night, anyway,” I agreed. “They’ll be back tomorrow night. We didn’t do any permanent damage to them, but now they have this hole in your ward, and they’ll probably just sit back and make new ones until they can get to us.”
Ben Keonie offered me the fire extinguisher. “Ready for this?”
I looked at the fire and the smoke billowing out of the windows. “Yeah, good idea,” I said.
Chapter 25
Dawn brought us a scene of chaos. The site looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster, except that we all knew there was nothing natural about the destruction. Sharp knives of wood lay strewn about like Van Helsing’s personal weapons depot, and vehicles had been forcibly disassembled into their component parts. All that was missing was a gloomy heavy metal band to film a music video in the ruin, wind blowing dramatically through their spectacular manes of product-laden hair as they humped their guitars and lovingly fondled their favorite minor chords.
When Sophie, Ben, Frank, and the crew saw what was left of their trucks, they began to chirp “Fuck” in various registers like a small flock of birds-perhaps a new species of finch. The calls were varied and delivered with gusto. Granuaile joined in the morning chorus when she saw the skeleton of her ride nestled in the magically reinforced roof of the hogan.
“Fuckity fuck fuck!” she sang.
Sophie was especially dismayed to see that all the surveying stakes for the plant site down in the flat had been pulled up and destroyed. “We’re going to have to start all over,” she moaned. “And it’ll probably just get torn up again. This project is doomed. Fuck.”
Cell phones came out and voices began asking friends for a ride into town. I wondered if anyone was going to call Coyote-Mr. Benally-and let him know that the skinwalkers had trashed the site. I wondered if Coyote would make an appearance today at all.
Trucks began showing up to collect us after about a half hour. Granuaile and I climbed into the bed of a Ford half ton along with Sophie Betsuie. Frank got to ride shotgun, and he directed the driver-a friend of his-to drop us all off at the Blue Coffee Pot for breakfast. The place was hopping again, because the coal mine was shut down for the second time. It was good to have visual confirmation of my success; Colorado should be in a good mood when I settled down to have another chat.
Once we were seated near a window with cups of strong coffee in front of us, I asked Frank if he could tell me anything more about skinwalkers and how they operated-anything at all that might help me understand them better. I carefully did not imply that this knowledge might help me to defeat them somehow, because Sophie had never been told I was anything but a geologist. But, surprisingly, Frank tilted his head at Sophie and said, “She can actually tell you more’n I can. She’s got some privileged information regarding those two.”
“You know them?” I said.
“Maybe,” Sophie admitted. Her fingers danced nervously around the edges of her coffee mug and she eyed Frank, asking him if it was truly okay to share this information with me. He gave her a nod to go ahead.
“It’s speculation, not hard fact,” she stressed.
“Understood,” I said.
“I only know this because of my clan,” she began. “And all the workers, including Ben, are from my clan, if that helps you understand why we’re on board with Frank here. There was a murder about ten years ago, and it was a big deal. Divorced woman killed in her home. So, uh… wait. I need a pen.”
She fished a retractable gel pen out of her jacket pocket and then grabbed a napkin out of the dispenser lying on the table. Before she could continue, the waitress arrived to take our order, and we paused to do that. It was a bit depressing for me, because I had nothing to order for Oberon; I asked for an extra side of bacon anyway in his honor.
When the waitress departed, Sophie began to write on her napkin. “All right,” she said, “I don’t want to say the names of the dead or attract the attention of those who may still be living”-and here Frank nodded sagely at her caution-“so I’m going to just show you these names and explain from there. You don’t read them aloud or anything, okay?”
Granuaile and I murmured our agreement. Sophie flipped around the napkin and pointed with her pen to the name at the top, which read Millie Peshlakai.
“This person was the murder victim, distantly related to me and the rest of the crew. She was only about forty, and the cause of death was clearly violent. Nicest lady. Nobody could figure out why she’d ever be a target. And these two here,” she paused, pointing to the names Robert and Ray Peshlakai, “were her sons. Twins in their late teens. They disappeared. Haven’t been seen since the day their mother was found. Most people figured they
