The Glob in my pocket heated, red hot and fast. Its energies were clear, crystalline, and spread like a net, like a flower opening. The energies met between us in a sparkle of light that even they could see. The black power spiraled out of shape and into a tiny black tornado, heading for my pocket. The Glob sucked down the power like flushing filth down a toilet.
Grandmother jerked back, pulling on her power as if it was a rope in a game of tug-of-war. Her power began to fray, split, fine threads breaking. The red motes whirled in a circle around her head.
She made an inarticulate sound, too loud for Cherokee speech, like “Dladladla!” She grabbed at her chest as if the loss of power hurt her there.
Aya looked back and forth between us, his eyes wide with shock.
“I yield to no one,” I said.
“Gigadanegisgitried to buy you. I should have sold you to her,” she spat.
Aya jerked, a loss of control I never would have expected. “Gigadanegisgi?” he whispered.
I started, “Somebody tell m—”
“Gigadanegisgimeans blood taker,” Aya said. “She would have sold you, her granddaughter, my sister, to avampire.”
It should have surprised me. It didn’t. “Crap on crackers,” I said.
Grandmother stood in a single fluid motion and leaped over the fire at me.
CHAPTER 5
Spear Finger, Liver-Eater, and U’tlun’ta
As always, the world slowed, a strong battlefield readiness and that weird time shift of war. The world around me thickened, as if time itself had turned to cold molasses.
There wasn’t time to stand and meet her attack. Beast did... something. I raised my left arm in defense. Pain shattered along my spine, across my shoulders, arms, and through my hands. My fingers burned. My body shifted.Fast.To half-form.
She was still midleap.
I rocked back to my butt. Away from her. Caught her foot in a knobby hand and threw her over me, past me. She crashed into the east wall.
Beast screamed her challenge. I stood on my/our wide paw-feet. “I do not yield!” I shouted.
Grandmother twisted to her feet, limber as a teenaged gymnast, her linen shift pulled to the side. She stopped. Her yellow eyes were on me. Her mouth hung open. Grandmother had never seen such a thing as I had just become. We faced off, me hesitating, Grandmother frozen in shock.
I took a breath to speak and caught the strange scent,unmasked by the rosemary. Once before, the old woman smelled very faintly of witch magic. Now it was stronger. And beneath that, she stank of—
U’tlun’ta. Liver-eater. The creature skinwalkers became when they—when we—did black magic and took the life and the flesh of a living human.
Rancid as a battlefield littered with the fallen and the burned.
That was why the potent rosemary. To hide the stench.
There was an amulet tied around her neck, visible where her shift had twisted.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Aya slowly rise to a crouch, but he didn’t stand to fight. He wasn’t reacting to his grandmother smelling like a burning rotten corpse. It was as if he couldn’t smell the rancid reek. As if he was frozen in indecision and confusion. Or frozen in Sixmankiller’s power.
Grandmother’s magic attacked again, blacker than a starless night, cold as the depths of hell. The Glob heated. It wasn’t skinwalker magic. It wasn’tu’tlun’tamagic. It felt and looked like black magic, which was witch magic. Sixmankiller was not a witch. The power had to be stolen. More black power shot out, countered by the Glob in my pocket.
The attacking energies came from the amulet resting on her breastbone, tied around her neck. It wasn’t a medicine bag. It was something else.
The Glob sucked the attack down like a white shark swallowing prey. The amulet on Granny’s neck began to glow a dull red, like heated steel, then brighter. The Glob drained down the light too. Grandmother screamed. I smelled burned, rotten flesh.
The old woman dove at me again, shoving off with her right foot.
There was a knapped stone blade in her left hand.
