And then the sound of shattering glass fills the room as the bedroom window breaks.
Chaos, as we scramble for the trapdoor and the tunnel to safety.
Rissa drops first, gun drawn, no hesitation. Clive helps his mom follow, and then Ben.
Clive shouts, “Maggie, you go fi . . .” His voice dies as he looks back at me over his shoulder. His face pales, the expression draining away in fear. Whatever he sees behind me is not good. “Maggie . . . ?” he whispers, his voice soft with terror.
I draw Neizghání’s sword.
“Go!” I shout.
Without a word, Clive drops through the trapdoor.
I can feel it now, whatever horror Clive saw. It’s behind me, reaching for me.
I turn and swing.
And strike a man.
I almost pull up short, I’m so shocked. But I’m moving too fast and he’s too close, so I cleave him in half. Locusts splatter and break, the rotten-pork smell of their guts filling the bedroom.
And the man re-forms, his body a mass of locusts. Crawling over one another, singing their strange shrill song. He smiles, dripping locusts from his mouth, a black carapace for a tongue.
I strike again. He re-forms.
I take his head off, but it doesn’t matter. As soon as the blade is clear, he re-forms.
This time, when his head re-forms, his mouth opens. His voice is the buzz of a thousand winged creatures, the song of nightmares long buried underground, the cry of a million hungry mouths. And he says one word:
“Godslayer.”
Horror shudders through my body. The same word the archer called me after Ben’s wild accusation.
I run.
Honágháahnii has me diving for the tunnel entrance headfirst. I hit something fleshy that grunts. Clive. He puts me on my feet and slams the trapdoor closed. Slides the bolt closed. But it won’t hold long. Already locusts are trying to get in around the thin edges at the seams. Once enough are through to make a man again, I have no doubt they will.
I get to my feet, and we both sprint, sightless, through the earth. Cobwebs cling to my face, something skitters down my cheek. I slap at it, too terrified to scream. The tunnel seems to go on for miles, hours, even though logic tells me that the garage is only a few dozen yards away. But logic has no claim here, and when Clive and I finally spot hazy daylight, we stagger toward it like it’s our last hope in the world.
There’s a rope ladder, and I drag myself up it. Ben sticks a hand out and helps me up the last rungs. Clive is next. And we slam that door shut too.
“Where’s Rissa?” I pant, my heart still hammering in my chest. “And Grace?”
“Already gone,” Ben says. “They went out the back way, headed for Crystal, like you said.”
“Already?” Clive asks, incredulous.
“I thought that was your plan,” Ben says, looking back and forth between us, worried.
“It was,” Clive says. “Until we saw that . . . thing.”
“What thing?” Ben didn’t see the locust man.
“No time,” I say, moving toward the closest bike. “We go. We’ll worry about meeting up with Rissa later.”
Clive doesn’t argue. Just gets on the bike. Ben slides on behind him. I climb onto the other bike, where my pack and shotgun are still tied to the rack, secure my goggles, and adjust the cloth over my nose and mouth.
“Here,” Clive says, handing me a small metal device, curved to fit the shape of my ear.
“What is this?”
“Sort of like a walkie-talkie. A short-range communication link. I call it a commlink. Not the most original name, but as long as it works, right? This way we can talk to each other on the bikes.”
I tuck it over my ear, the round center clicking into place. A thin wire hangs loose against my neck.
“Tap it to turn it on. Tap it again to turn it off.”
“Did you build this?”
“Try it,” he says.
I tap the commlink. “Can you hear me?” he asks, clear as if he were standing next to me.
I nod, then remember to talk. “I can hear you.”
He gives one to Ben, who slips hers on and taps the device. “Hello!” she shouts.
I wince. “Okay, so we know they work. Let’s go, and remember: Whatever you see—and I mean whatever—do not stop. Understood?”
“I know.” Clive kicks the bike alive. “Where are we going?”
“Tse Bonito for now. And then”—I look over at Ben and pat the bloody bandanna in my pocket—“we’ll find a way.”
We skip opening the garage bay, opting to sneak out the back door single file. The swarm is still hovering around the trailer and the bar, which look as though a black blanket has been thrown over the structures themselves. I know it won’t be long before the swarm figures out where we went and follows. We’re buying hours, not days.
“Fire,” Clive mutters over the communication link.
“What?” I speed up as we come off the dirt path and hit the paved freeway. He accelerates to stay close, Ben huddled low against his back.
“Just like the tsé nayéé’, we can burn those locusts with fire.”
“I don’t think so. There’s thousands, maybe millions, and they’re smart enough to avoid it. Plus, your mom won’t appreciate it if we burn her house down. We’ll think of a better way.”
“What if we don’t?”
I have no idea what to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all.
Chapter 15
Nothing after that. Just a breakneck push to Tse Bonito, and soon the town comes into view. Tse Bonito is the main hub of activity for southeastern Dinétah, located at a T-shaped stretch of asphalt where the two main highways meet. Its busy roads are filled with shops and stew stands, interrupted by the occasional hogan or trailer, all tucked within the embrace of tall white cliffs. I hate it. Always have. And I hate it even more since everything with Longarm went down. But I can’t avoid it today.
We move through town, weaving through afternoon traffic. I’m pretty covered up—goggles, rag over half my face—and I have no reason to think the Law Dogs might be looking for me, but I keep my eyes peeled, wary of every glimpse of khaki I catch out of the corner of my eye. Mostly it’s Diné people, going about their business. Oblivious to the swarm of locusts thirty miles behind us.
Clive leads us to the dusty parking lot of a pawn shop just off the main drag. The lot is crisscrossed with a hundred different tire tracks. He kills the engine and gets off. The pawn shop looks like pretty much every pawn shop I’ve ever seen. A long rectangular building with a white concrete exterior, one of those cheap buildings they built when the economy was booming and people were more worried about speed and practicality than beauty. The long flat front has no windows, just two glass doors huddled at the west end of the building. Above the doors is a sign that says CAFÉ & PAWN.
“This where we’re stopping?” I ask.
“We’ll wait here for Rissa.”
“Isn’t this a little public?”
“This is where their trail ended.” He kicks at the dusty parking lot, sending up swirls of dirt, disturbing the patterns of a hundred vehicles and footprints. “She’ll know to come here.”
No wonder they lost the trail here. If Kai came through this parking lot, there’s no way we’d be able to distinguish which tracks were his just by looking with our eyes. But we aren’t just looking with our eyes, or even just our noses. We have a secret weapon.
Who right now is checking her profile in the glass doors, striking various cool poses on the back of Clive’s bike.
“Go on,” I tell Clive. “I want to talk to Ben for a minute.”
She stops the modeling and turns to me.
“About what?”
“Girl stuff.” I smile flatly.