Just what I needed for my birthday. The guy who wired a dozer with dynamite and killed four people. Not likely he's going to play nice and surrender if I catch him. Not likely he's going to congratulate me on my expertise if he catches me!
Assuming this person was human at all. That was. not a good assumption,, really. The Little People could take on all the attributes of a flesh-and-blood human when they chose, and there were other spirits that could do the same.
This might not be a looter, a saboteur. This might be something much worse.
She was afraid to move, lest she be spotted, and afraid not to move. She certainly couldn't stay here forever! She strained her eyes against the darkness, but she couldn't make out much more than a darker shadow against a pile of sand or gravel. If she hadn't seen him move there, she wouldn't have known he was in that blotch of .darkness. She'd never have guessed that the shadow was alive if she hadn't seen it in action.
Then it moved again; so quickly that her heart jumped up into her throat. It was spooky; maybe a couple of pieces of gravel fell, but otherwise the lurker was silent. It was heading over in the direction of the roped-off corner.
So, does that mean it's the looter, another would-be scavenger, one of the Little People, or somebody else altogether?
She followed, heart pounding, palms sweating, and wishing she had a night-scope.
Then it occurred to her that she did have a kind of night-scope, after all. The only problem was that it was hard to move if she went into the kind of mental state where she could See things, see the purely physical, and See Medicine things. If this other lurker was something other than human, he would really betray himself at that point. But she would be severely handicapped-
That's why you're a Medicine Woman, stupid. "Hard" doesn't mean "impossible. " Just try not to move too fast when you're double-sighted, or you'll trip over something.
She froze for a moment, putting herself in the right frame of reference.
She knew she'd matched it, when instead of only the shadow of a human lurking over by the dirt dug up by the new-wrecked dozer, she saw not only the stranger, but a stag, standing beside him.
Interesting. So her unknown had a medicine-animal self. At least that meant he wasn't one of the Little People; they didn't have medicine-animals, spirit-totems, since they were spirits. And it meant he was indeed a "he"-it was a stag, after all, and not a doe-and that he probably wasn't white. Although she had met white people who had medicine-creatures, there weren't many of them in the Tulsa area. He didn't fit the profile of someone who would be grave-robbing, either; a medicine-animal would have left him, if he'd done something as appalling as that. No one she knew had a stag for a medicine-animal. ...
But he didn't seem aware of his medicine-animal; at least, he paid no attention to it, staring instead very fixedly at something lying just inside the roped-off area.
That was really odd; how could he not know he had a spirit-guardian? And for one to appear, to try to force him to become aware of it, he had to be in some kind of danger. ...
The stag was very agitated, frantic; surely he had to feel somethingl Even if he was only marginally in touch with his spiritual self, he had to feel it! The stag kept alternating between threatening gestures with its horns toward the man's right, and pawing at the earth, threatening something there, where the man was looking.
She concentrated a little more, and narrowed her focus Whatever this is, it's very small-and I think it's in that area where I spotted something earlier.
Finally, something clicked, and she saw it, or rather, save the medicine-self that was the echo of its physical self.
It was a single artifact, a small one. A medicine-pouch hardly bigger than the palm of her hand. She had missed seeing exactly what it was the first time because she had beer "looking" for a mass of relics, not a single piece.
A real, physical light flashed on, startlingly bright in all the darkness. The other person had a penlight and was shining it on the object, and she cursed him mentally for a fool, showing any kind of light out here at night! Anybody driving by would see it; anybody keeping watch for saboteurs or troublemakers would see it! How could he be so stupid?
That's the same kind of dumb trick David would pull- Whoever the idiot was, he didn't act as if he'd expected to find the pouch there, and she wondered how he had spotted it in the first place. Maybe he was marginally sensitive-
Maybe pigs sing arias. He probably saw something reflective.
He was studying it, carefully. Although it was too much to hope for that he'd leave it there. . . .
Dammit. That alone would have told me if it was from one of the looted graves. But I won't know that unless I can get my hands on it, and get the "feel" of it, to see if it matches the "feel" of any of the gravesites.
The stag feinted toward the right again, and this time movement there, movement in the spirit world, made her focus her attention in that direction. Oh hell. Oh no-
Little People. Lots of them. In human form, in the dress of her people from the time of the first French traders, but with faces too wild and too hungry to ever pass for human. Waiting and watching, avidly, their eyes glowing with a feral, anticipatory light that made her shiver. They crouched in a group, making her think of a waiting pack of coyotes, or a mob of crows. Waiting for dinner to kill itself. Watching some supremely stupid young creature, who was just a heartbeat away from doing something fatal.
Fatal?
She turned her newly sharpened spirit-sight back toward the medicine-pouch, following the gaze of the Little People. Yes, that was what they were watching; it looked as if they had been waiting for this man to find it-
Fatal? She strained her abilities to the limit, and prayed a little for good measure-and knew, suddenly and completely, what it was that was "fatal" about the pouch.
It was the bait to a very mundane trap-it was wired to a bomb!
She didn't stop to think; she just acted. She flung herself across the intervening space, hurled herself at him, tackled him and rolled him sideways, just as he started to reach out to pick it up.
Together they rolled right into the crowd of Little People, who flowed about them in confused eddies, momentarily deflected from their purpose.
She felt their anger, hot on her skin; their rage, at being cheated of their rightful victim. And she looked up to see them surrounding both her and the stranger.
David had intended to head straight for the portable office on the site, but something made him take a little detour instead. A feeling that there was something out in the "forbidden" area that he really should know about.
He hadn't been certain about the hunch, but it was too strong to be denied. But he'd stopped, right by a pile of dirt, feeling a little stupid at following a "hunch," and played his penlight over the area-
A flash of pale blue caught the light, and he aimed the circle of illumination there, expecting to see nothing more than half an old plastic cup.
Instead, the light shone on the deep reds and blues of really old beadwork, surrounded by the remains of quill work, all set into what had to be a truly ancient medicine pouch.
He stared at it, transfixed, unable to look away. He forgot what he had come for in the first place. After a few moments, the fascination turned to something else.
Desire. He had to have this thing. It was meant for him It had called him to take it, called to him out of the dark-ness. He must take it-
He reached out for it, slowly, with his free hand-
And something hit him from the side, knocking all the breath right out of him, sending him sprawling.
He had not been ready; he had not even been close to ready. He hit his head on the hard ground as he toppled over, and that partially stunned him. On top of that, his attacker had knocked the breath out of his lungs with the blow, something that hadn't happened since the last time he'd been "sucker-punched" in grade school. He and his assailant rolled over and over in the dirt, finally coming to a halt a few feet away from where he'd been hiding.