I Am Called Shaman - Rebecca Reeves The Shaman Series

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on, people,” Agent Delaney yelled. “We’re not on safari here.”

      “I need to check on Tiara,” I said.

      Gaagii was still on the branch were I’d left him. Fox, using her back claws like a cat, had climbed up into the tree. She was perched in a notch near the raven.

      “Called in reinforcements, did you?” I asked.

      Gaagii lifted his shiny, black head and puffed up his chest feathers.

      “Very impressive,” I admitted. With that many eyes in the sky, the odds of finding a burned truck went from about nil, to remotely possible, providing the SK had abandoned the truck a reasonably close distance from here.

      Fox pawed at my arm. She wanted to help in the search.

      “I appreciate your enthusiasm,” I said, “but Gaagii has given me enough to worry about with the ravens.”

      Gaagii bobbed his head. I deciphered his pictures. The canopy of trees would thicken further to the north. Fox would be able to see and smell things on the ground that would be hidden from the sky.

      He was right. Her kind has extraordinary hearing and sight, but the sense of smell is their keenest sense of all, and though foxes rarely venture out of their own territories, they are capable of covering long distances.

      The band around my chest tightened another notch. My only hope of getting back on the SK’s trail while it was still warm was to put innocent beings at risk. Letting Fox go would be risking one more, but working as a team, the whole group would be safer.

      I loosened a black feather from my staff.

      “Come here,” I said to Fox.

      I attached the feather to the scruff of her neck with a length of waxed jute. “This will act like an antenna. It’ll help keep you better connected with Gaagii. I want you to stay together, and I don’t want you taking any unnecessary chances.” I paused. “Do you two hear me?”

      I waited for their affirmation before continuing. “If you find the truck, Gaagii, I’ll need landmarks to know where it is, so give me a high aerial.”

      Gaagii ruffled his wing feathers.

      The talisman secured, I stepped back, and looked at them; so confident, eager, determined. A tear rolled down my cheek. I swiped it away, and swallowed a lump of foreboding. “Get back as fast as you can.”

      Gaagii purred and leaned forward. I rubbed my cheek against his.

      “Blesséd be, my friend,” I whispered.

      With that, they shot out of the tree. Fox took to the ground, her bushy tail straight back like a rudder. Gaagii took to the air, wings pumping to gain altitude. He flew toward the wheel.

      A murder of ravens. Not a flock of ravens; a murder of ravens. I shuddered at the distinction.

      The wheel in the sky broke apart with a riot of shouts both human and avian.

      The birds took to the north and disappeared into the smoke.

      Chapter Four

      3:50 p.m.

      I’d been tasked to follow the SK’s ingress, combing the trail from the truck to the hide. Sundara had her nose to the ground. I followed her, Tiara followed me. We’d settled into a slow, methodical pace so as to not miss even the most subtle clue.

      I’d been issued my very own FBI agent for accompaniment. He was bookish and he gave Tiara a wide berth, flinching whenever the horse so much as swished her tail. He watched me as if I were a suspect, keeping his distance, but never letting me out of his sight. I felt like I was being audited.

      Even if I’d been able to elude my babysitter, I couldn’t have raised any wild animals to question. They’d taken to deep cover, hiding from the screaming news helicopters, and the volunteer teams in fluorescent orange vests that scoured the countryside in pairs.

      Sundara and I investigated as best we could with just the old-fashioned skills that any scent team has available to them. There are charts, based on decades of research, that calculate the perceptibility of human scent by experienced tracking dogs in varied conditions. I factored in terrain, wind, temperature, and humidity, and was able to calculate that this ingress scent trail was, at the very least, twenty hours old. Factoring in Sundara’s superior wolf sense of smell, I could add up to four hours to that number. Aside from the smoke, we were in near ideal conditions for scent tracking in this region of northern Arizona. Sundara was giving it her all, but the SK’s trail was evaporating.

      For me, the problem was, without access to the visions of animal witnesses, I was only getting part of the story from the boot prints we found. It was the difference between a preview for a movie on TV and watching the full length, feature film in a theater.

      We were about three hundred yards up from the official lookout point when the dog’s two-toenail autograph reappeared. Further down the road, the Cabela’s print showed up. The girl had been strolling, the dog, running willy-nilly over the land.

      The SK’s trail had begun to weave in and out of the tree line, which suggested to me an increasing attitude of caution. His footprints vanished in the places under the trees where he walked on the blanket of pine needles, and I had to wait for Sundara to pick his scent back up before we could move forward.

      Sundara stopped ahead and wagged her tail. I knelt beside her. The SK had stepped back onto the road here. His boot print had all but obliterated the print under it. All but the Cabela’s stamp.

      If a chill goes down your spine when someone crosses your grave, what would you feel when your killer crossed the last path you walked in this life? Did she feel an unexpected ripple of fear? Did she pause and listen hard for a moment as when you hear an odd sound in the house in the middle of the night and pass it off as nothing?

      I shook off the creepy feeling, marked the print with a yellow flag, and continued on until we met up with Colin and Max down near the lookout point.

      It seemed Delaney didn’t place any more trust in the Sedona PD than he did in me. Colin had his own babysitter tagging behind, the redhead, Agent Givens. They looked like movie stars framed against the dramatic red rock background.

      Colin was young and not much taller than I am. His short dark hair and utter enthusiasm always reminded me of Keanu Reeves in some cop role he must have played, but for Colin, there was no acting involved — being a cop was life itself.

      Only the most dedicated officers are considered for K9 units, and Colin fit that bill, but the metaphysical town of Sedona hadn’t given him much opportunity to mature as an investigator. I wasn’t sure which most spurred the excessive fervor in his expression today: a real crime scene, or the lovely Agent Givens.

      “You find anything?” I yelled so Colin could hear me over the pulsations of the annoying helicopter as it made another pass.

      “Not much down on the face of the mountain, but up here…” Colin pointed to the lookout point. The clearing was dotted with evidence markers and law enforcement personnel taking photographs and measurements. Colin’s finger panned to the left toward the Munds trail. The markers became few and farther between, but they gave me a general idea of what path the SK had taken; serpentine on the ingress, straight on the egress.

      “You got full ingress and egress too?” Colin asked.

      After I nodded an affirmative, Colin called Herb on the radio and gave him an update. We were to wait for further instructions.

      My babysitter was more comfortable in the company of other law enforcement officers. He relaxed his stance as he and Colin fell into an easy conversation, speaking in abbreviated cop talk that they used as much to size each other up as to relay actual information.

      Agent Givens had done everything she could to downplay her looks so she’d blend in with the

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