Ghoul Interrupted

When we were finally finished, he said, “I think you two should fly back to Boston today.”

  “Hallelujah!” Gilley said, his eyes lighting up with the idea.

  “Are you crazy?” I snapped, knowing exactly what Heath was thinking. “You want us to go away now?”

  Heath put his hand gently on the side of my face. “This isn’t your fight, babe. It’s mine and my family’s.”

  “Oh, and so far, you Whitefeathers are doing such a great job of defending yourselves,” I said, angry that he wanted to send me away.

  Heath winced. “We’ll do better now that Pena’s on our side,” he vowed. “Hell, even my uncles are starting to come around. We all went over to the station and took a look at the damage. I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if you two hadn’t been safe inside that cell.”

  “We’d have been safe inside our hotel room,” Gil muttered, earning a glare from me.

  “We’re not leaving,” I told Heath, and I didn’t even bother asking Gil to stay. I just assumed he would. Or, should I say, I just hoped he wouldn’t throw a major hairy and have one of his epic meltdowns at the suggestion of staying.

  Which is why he secretly shocked me when he sighed dramatically and said, “M. J.’s right. We have to stay. There’s no way you guys can handle this thing without us.”

  Heath’s eyes moved to Gilley. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to handle this thing with you two here either,” he reasoned. “But at least I won’t be distracted every minute worrying about you guys. Do you know I didn’t sleep a wink last night, I was so worried about you, Em? I didn’t think to check my e-mail till around four a.m.”

  “Sorry,” I said, looking down at my lap. “I would’ve sent you a text or left a voice mail, but Cruz took our phones.”

  “He can be a real prick,” Heath said, moving his hand to cover mine. “But the point is that you two need to go home and let me deal with this thing. It’s my family and my business.”

  “Um . . . ow,” I said, pulling my hand away.

  Heath sighed and reached for my hand again. “Em, you just don’t get it. If this demon attacks my family again and you’re in the room, I’m gonna have to make a choice between trying to defend you or one of them, and I can’t make that choice. I’d lose either way.”

  “I can take care of myself, you know,” I told him.

  Heath ran his fingers lightly across the outside of my bandaged arm. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  I pulled my arm away from him again. “Heath, you have no idea how dangerous and ferocious this thing is! You can’t handle it alone!”

  “Oh, trust me,” he replied. “I do know how dangerous it is, and I won’t be alone. I’ve got my mom and my family to help fight it.”

  “But no one believes you!” I countered. “Your uncles think it’s a freaking mountain lion, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Pena’s talking to Vernon and Rex right now,” Heath assured me. “I think after what happened last night at the station, there’s no way they can deny this thing exists or that this demon is out for blood.”

  “Cruz thought it was a stunt we pulled,” Gilley reminded him.

  Heath shook his head. “Cruz isn’t the smartest guy in the tribe, Gil. No one’s going to listen to him. They’ll listen to Pena.”

  “We’re not leaving,” I said, digging in my heels.

  Heath opened his mouth to protest, but at that moment we heard someone call his name and we all turned to look at the door. None other than Sheriff Pena himself was coming into the diner. He nodded to Gilley and me when he got to our table and said, “I see you took my recommendation on where to go for breakfast.”

  I smiled. “It was just what the doctor ordered,” I told him.

  He pointed to my arm. “How’s the wound?”

  “Sore, but I’ve been assured it’s not fatal.”

  Pena’s serious face softened and the edges of his mouth lifted. “Glad to hear it,” he said. He then pulled over a nearby chair and turned it around to straddle it like he’d done when he’d asked Gil and me about our night in jail.

  “I’ve had a long talk with Vernon and Rex,” he began, “along with your mom, Heath, and a couple of the other elders, and we all agree that some sort of evil spirit is out for Whitefeather blood.”

  Even though the conversation was very serious, I felt my shoulders relax. Finally the tribe believed us! “We’re calling a tribal council,” he continued, “and we’ll be consulting with a few other Pueblos to see if they’ve ever dealt with anything like this.”

  Pena paused long enough to reach into his pocket and pull out a plastic-wrapped toothpick, which he unwrapped and stuck in his mouth to chew. We waited in silence for him to continue. “My guess,” he said next, “is that none of the other tribes have ever encountered anything like what we’re dealing with at Zanto. I’ve also spent a lot of the past hour combing the library for a copy of the histories to see if there’s anything in there about this evil spirit . . . but it’s odd. I can’t seem to find the book anywhere.” Pena didn’t exactly come right out and accuse us, but the implication was there in his voice.

  I cleared my throat and motioned with my head for Gilley to cough up the volume.

  Gilley narrowed his eyes hard at me and looked like he wasn’t about to confess for all of ten seconds, and we had ourselves a little silent argument with plenty of glares, stares, head motions, shakes, chin thrusts, and finally a kick under the table. That was from me, of course, and Gil finally, reluctantly, and with plenty of grumbling reached into his backpack and pulled out the missing volume.

  “We . . . uh . . . found this in the grass outside the library,” he said. “It must’ve fallen out the window or something.”

  Pena curled his large hand around the volume and pulled it close. “You know books,” he said. “Always leaping off shelves and running out the door, trying to flee the confinement of their libraries.”

  I chuckled, and was a little relieved that Pena actually had a sense of humor.

  I then took the opportunity to fill him in on what we’d read in the histories. Pena listened without comment, and when I was done, he said, “If you’re right and it’s the black hawk that’s after the Whitefeathers, then this would be some serious shit we’d be dealing with. I’m no medicine man, but I do know that the older the spirit, the more powerful it is. The legend of the black and white hawks dates back centuries to the very first stories our people told.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Gilley asked him.

  “Officially?”

  Gil nodded.

  “Host a bunch of meetings, consult the elders in our communities, and probably hold a few ceremonies, which likely won’t do a damn bit of good, and in the interim this thing’ll continue to try and pick off your family, Heath, one by one.”

  Gilley audibly gulped, but I saw the small glint in Pena’s eye and I knew there was more.

  “Unofficially,” he said after rolling the toothpick around on his tongue, “we’d like to hire you three.”

  I shook my head. Had he just said what I thought he said? “Wait . . . what?” I asked.

  Pena pointed to the three of us at the table. “You guys are professional ghostbusters, right?”

  Gilley, Heath, and I looked around at one another. “Uh . . . ,” said Gil.

  “Er . . . ,” said Heath.

  “We are,” I told him.

  Pena reached to the belt around his waist and pulled out the spike we’d given him. “I’m not sure if you can kill this thing, but seeing how you defended yourselves against it last night convinced me to give you three a shot. I can’t pay you much—I’ve only got about two thousand earmarked for discretionary spending in our budget—but it’s yours if you’ll take the job.”

  “We’ll take it,” I told him.

  “Hold on,” Heath said abruptly. “Last time I checked, we were a team, and as a team I think we should vote on this.”

  Uh-oh. “We don’t need
a vote,” I said, directing my comment to Sheriff Pena. “We’re in.”

  “Not without a vote,” Heath insisted, and the way he was eyeing Gilley, I knew what he was doing. He was going to try and get Gil to vote no and send the two of us packing.

  I glared at Heath, then turned steely eyes on Gilley, silently warning him to vote with me or there’d be trouble. “I vote we take the job,” I said with emphasis while I continued to stare hard at Gil.

  “I vote we don’t,” said Heath. “Gilley? Would you rather take this very dangerous job where you will probably die a really painful death, or go home to the safety of Boston for a few days of R and R?”

  I redirected the steely-eyed look to Heath. “Do we really need the theatrics? He’s not likely to die, Heath!”

  But he refused to look at me. Instead he kept his eyes on Gilley and reached for my bandaged arm. Lifting it before I could pull it away, he said, “No theatrics necessary. Just imagine if this had been your arm, Gil. Or your chest. Or your face!”

  Gilley visibly paled and touched all three places on his body as if checking to make sure they were unmarred.

  It was then that I decided to throw off the gloves. “Gilley,” I said sharply, pulling his attention from Heath. “If you want to go, you can go. I won’t stop you. But I’m going to stay here and work this case with or without you, and with or without Heath for that matter. You can head home, but you’ll be going back on the promise you made to my mom to always stand by me. If you can live with that, then fine. I’m sure Mama’s spirit will get over it . . . eventually.”

  Gil folded his arms across his chest and frowned at me. “Really, M. J.? You’re going to throw your dead mother into this?”

  I shrugged. “I’m just stating facts, Gil. You have to make a decision you can live with.”

  “If you live,” Heath countered. It was clear he was banking on me backing down if Gil wouldn’t commit.

  Gilley sighed and muttered something under his breath, which didn’t sound very flattering to either Heath or me, but in the end he sided with me. “Sheriff Pena,” he said. “We’re in. But we’ll need the check up front. There’s some equipment we need to buy.”

  Pena nodded and motioned with his chin to Heath. “You in, Whitefeather?”

  Heath looked as angry as I’d ever seen him, but I didn’t much care. He needed my help and for that matter he needed Gilley’s help too, so he’d just have to get over it. “I was always in,” he said levelly.

  “Good,” said the sheriff. “Then we’ll need to set a few ground rules so these two don’t ruffle too many feathers.”

  I couldn’t imagine ruffling any more feathers than we already had, but I didn’t say anything—I just let Pena talk. “The first rule of the Pueblo—”

  “Is that there is no Pueblo!” Gilley said quickly, giggling at his inside joke. I kicked him again under the table and that wiped the grin off his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be good.”

  Pena continued without missing a beat, “. . . is that you three are guests of the tribe. In other words, you’re one notch above tourists, but not much above them, understand?”

  “We can’t go into any unauthorized places or public buildings like the library without permission,” I said.

  Pena nodded. “No more of this leaving your car at the entrance to the Pueblo during sacred ceremonies and walking on tribal ground, okay?”

  “Understood,” I told him.

  “Also,” he continued, “the Pueblo is normally closed to outsiders after eight p.m., but I’m going to grant you three special access until two a.m. Again, you won’t be able to enter any homes or buildings unless you’ve been given special permission, but you may patrol the Pueblo and the highlands as you see fit. The only area completely off-limits to you is the burial grounds. No outsiders are allowed there under any circumstances.”

  “Can we have a map of the Pueblo, Sheriff?” I asked, worried that we might wander onto some off-limits territory without realizing it.

  Pena got up and swiveled the chair around to tuck it back under the table. “No,” he said without explanation, which surprised me. “You two just stick with Whitefeather here, and he’ll keep you out of trouble, right, Heath?”

  “Yes, sir,” Heath promised, keeping his eyes on the table.

  The sheriff nodded and wished us luck with a tip of his hat, and then he left us alone to hash out a plan.

  Gil brought up the story of the black hawk legend again and how the medicine man had taken the spirit of the demon into his body, and it had turned him into an evil person who killed White Wolf. “They’re all buried in some secret location,” Gil said.

  “And that must be where the black hawk escaped from,” I reasoned. “My thinking is that someone—”

  “Daryl West,” Gil cut in, reminding me of the remains that were found on the Pueblo.

  “Yeah, Daryl West,” I said. “He must’ve stumbled onto the secret burial place and somehow freed the demon, who then tore him to shreds.”

  Heath made a T with his hands. “Time out,” he said. “Who’s this Daryl West dude?”

  Gil explained how he’d managed to break into Deputy Cruz’s e-mails and found the identity of the remains of Daryl, who’d been declared by the coroner as having been the victim of a mountain lion attack.

  “He comes from Los Alamos,” Gilley said, retrieving his tablet and scrolling through the e-mails. “And he had a few run-ins with the law over grave robbing, if you can believe it.”

  Heath sat up straighter and leaned across the table to squint at Gilley’s screen. “Hold on,” he said. “Did you say grave robbing?”

  Gil turned the tablet toward Heath so he could read it. “Yeah,” he said. “See?”

  Heath took the gadget and studied the e-mail. “What is it?” I asked him.

  “The reason Pena was reluctant to give you a map of our lands isn’t just because our burial grounds are sacred, but because there’s a pretty good black market that’s cropped up in recent years trading in ancient American Indian artifacts.”

  My eyes widened. “You think West was robbing Native American burial grounds?”

  “I’d bet on it,” he said.

  “So then he really could’ve stumbled onto the vessel that held the black hawk,” I said, tapping my finger on the tabletop while I thought on that. “We need to find that vessel, guys.”

  “Wouldn’t the demon have destroyed it?” Gil said. “I mean, if it escaped because West uncorked it, or did whatever to free the demon, it’s probably in a thousand pieces by now.”

  I nodded. “You know, you’re right, Gil. Okay, so the place to start is where West’s remains were found. That’s got to be close to where the demon was hidden away all those years ago. Can you find us that locale, Gil?”

  He nodded. “Yep,” he said, pulling out his wireless keyboard and clicking his fingers across it.

  “And we’ll need to get some proper equipment,” I added while Gilley typed. “Now that we have some funds, we can get that night-vision camera and a couple more meters. When’s that used meter you already purchased going to get here?”

  Gilley eyed his watch. “Today,” he said. “Should be dropped off at the front desk anytime before noon.”

  We then hashed out a plan for the next hour, at the end of which Heath and I were once again on good terms.

  Chapter 10

  “That’s weird,” Heath said, staring at Gilley’s iPad later that day when we’d gone back to the hotel for a bit of rest before tackling the demon again.

  “What’s weird?” I asked, peeking over his shoulder as he looked at the image of where Gil had pinpointed the exact location that the remains of Daryl West had been found.

  “This isn’t as close to our burial grounds as I’d thought,” he said.

  I squinted at the aerial snapshot. All I saw was scrub and rocky terrain. “Where is it, then?”

  “No-man’s-land,” he said. “It’s on the other side of the foothills that
surround the Zanto burial grounds.”

  “Maybe Daryl went over the foothills to reach them?” I suggested.

  Heath shook his head. “That’d be really stupid,” he said. “The foothills are steep and filled with loose rock and tricky terrain. Going over them would take four times as long as traveling by road, and you’d have to go in by foot, which would make for a really slow getaway. Unless of course you had a three-wheeler, which would only get you as far as the foothills and you’d still have to climb over them. Naw, if you were going to head to our burial grounds, you’d take the same road Bev took before she crashed.”

  I studied the dot on the screen. “What the heck was he doing way out in no-man’s-land, then?”

  “Probably running for his life,” Gil grumbled drowsily while he reclined back on his bed.

  I ignored him and directed my next question at Heath. “How long will it take us to drive there?”

  Heath poked at the screen to move the map around. “We can drive up the main road and get close, then hike in. It should only take us about an hour.”

  “Well, we’d better go now, then,” I suggested. “I don’t want to get caught out there after dark.”

  “We’re not even sure it’s safe during the day,” Heath said.

  “Yeah, but at least the humidity will be at its lowest point now in the afternoon, which means that even if the demon did rear its ugly head, it’d be weaker than during the hours between midnight and dawn.”

  Heath eyed me skeptically. “How many spikes you got?”

  “Ten or so,” I said. “Five each should be enough.”

  “Okay,” he relented. “And let’s see if Gil will let us borrow his sweatshirt.”

  I eyed the bed where Gilley was lying back with his eyes closed. “Gil?”

  No answer.

  “Gilley?” I said a little louder.

  He replied with a long nasal snore.

  “He says we can take it,” I whispered.

  Heath grinned at me and offered his hand. “Come on. Let’s get out there and see what we see.”

  The trip to the site where Daryl’s remains were found took exactly one hour and we traveled the same road we’d come down when we went to check out the site where Beverly had crashed her car.