I wrapped the towel tight around my forearm, picked up my phone and my remaining grocery bags, and checked out at the front desk, where the man had apparently heard nothing or at least chosen to hear nothing, and looked at my wrapped arm and the twenty-dollar bill I put on the counter for the lamp and then looked at the television and said, “Checkout’s not til eleven.”
“Right,” I said. “I know. Got a busy day today.”
Outside, the blood trail ran from the broken window across the parking lot and into the brush at the far end, where it disappeared into the pre-dawn darkness.
I followed it as far as I could with my eyes, then looked down at my phone.
I thought about Silas, the real one, who was no doubt tracking me down himself right now.
But then I remembered those lifeless eye voids staring at me across the motel bed, and I dialed the number from which Yazzie had sent me her text.
It rang twice.
“This is Ranger Yazzie.”
“It’s Katie Gregory,” I said. “I just fought off the coyote-thing from the mountains.”
A pause. Then, quieter, with an almost motherly quality. “Are you hurt?”
“Some scratches. It’s worse off than I am.” I said with a hint of pride. “I need help.”
CHAPTER 7
Katie
The silence on the line lasted long enough that I started to wonder if Ranger Yazzie had hung up on me. I wouldn’t have blamed her, really.
“Where are you right now?” Yazzie’s voice had dropped.
“I’m in the parking lot of a motel called the Turquoise Sands on the east side of Santa Fe.”
“Do you know where it went?”
“No. It jumped through the window and escaped into the brush. There’s a blood trail, but it’s too dark to see where it leads.”
There was another pause. I heard her breathing, measured and controlled, and then what sounded like a door closing on her end. When she came back on she was quieter. “Tell me what happened.”
So I told her. The knock at the door, the charred sage smell, the creature and my battle with it. She listened without interrupting, which was more than I’d allowed myself to hope already.
When I finished, she exhaled. “You hit it with a chair.”
“It was a really heavy chair.”
“And it jumped out the window?” I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like she was impressed.
“Yeah.”
“And it looked like the man who brought you to the hospital?”
“Like it was wearing his face, yeah. Until I injured it. Then it switched to its messed-up-coyote form.”
“That’s consistent with the stories,” Yazzie said softly, almost to herself.
My heart picked up pace. “You’ve heard this described before?”
“Miss Gregory?—”
“You can call me Katie.”
