LITMIR.BIZ

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the struggle to be respected in spite of her physical beauty; however, anyone who could look past her face would see the intelligence and edgy determination behind her eyes.

      “What’s her name?” Agent Givens asked.

      “Sundara,” I said. “It means ‘beauty’ in Sanskrit.”

      Sundara sniffed the woman’s hand then allowed herself to be petted.

      “It fits her,” Agent Givens said.

      That was true enough. Sundara’s face, neck and legs are creamy white. The top of her body is variegated gray and black as if she were draped in fine lace. Her sheer size caught people’s attention, but it was her eyes that captured them.

      Wolves are well aware of their lineage. When they look upon you, there’s no mistaking their ancient intelligence. Their bodies radiate strength and confidence. A healthy wolf rarely has to prove their dominance.

      Agent Givens carried a good deal of Wolf Medicine inside herself. She just hadn’t learned to trust it yet. It was good for them to meet.

      I wanted to get Max’s perspective in case he’d discovered anything he couldn’t communicate to Colin, but it’s as rude to pet a K9 cop on duty as it would be to pet a human cop on duty. I was going to have to do it the harder way.

      I gripped my staff and pretended to be listening to the humans. I nodded when they did, but I let their voices fade away. I tapped into my gift, and soon the highlights of Max’s day superimposed themselves like a hologram in the center of our circle.

      Max recounted his steps and the times that Colin had made him wait so Colin could study the ground. At one such place, Max had been pressed between Colin and Agent Givens. The section they studied held an ingress print from the SK. The two-toenail print of the victim’s dog ran parallel to it. Without the distinction of time, one could deduce they’d walked together. It was as disconcerting as the obliterated Cabela’s print up the hill.

      A blinding pain shot through my temple. I couldn’t hold the hologram any longer. I broke the connection with Max and tuned back into the human conversation.

      “At least he doesn’t shoot them in the face, like that nutcase you guys collared last year,” Colin said to my babysitter. “No open casket for those victims.”

      I blanched, remembering the girl’s face as the bullets had struck her chest; her entire body paralyzed as if she’d stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. Then her face melded into my father’s face.

      Two days had passed before my father’s body had been found. Or what had been left of it. The animals had owned the land in the McDowell Mountains back then. For two days my father’s body had been ravished by the blazing sun, freezing darkness, and the hundreds of chewing, rending, burrowing life forms that thrive in the seemingly barren desert.

      I’d snuck out from under my mother’s watchful eye and pedaled the impossible distance to my father’s death site. Using landmarks I’d seen on TV, taken by news helicopters, I’d found the place he’d taken his last breath.

      I didn’t have a clue back then of how to use my gift, or that I even had one. I was just a little girl searching for her beloved father in the last place he was known to be. I searched the land, not for his killer, but hoping to find some invisible door, a portal that, if I wished hard enough, would open and allow me access to the other world into which my father had disappeared.

      I never found the door, but I did find a piece of my father under a trampled bunch of desert sage — a tooth, held tight by a bit of bloodied jawbone. The bone had fallen away and only the leathery band of gum remained, more stain than actual tissue matter all these years later.

      Another helicopter made a deafening pass over us. My father’s tooth blew in the downdraft along with the other amulets attached to my staff.

      Herb’s voice broke in on the radio. Sundara and Max had done their jobs, now it was up to the authorities to finish documenting all we’d found. It would be a race to get it done by nightfall.

      Herb instructed Colin to assist the forensics team in any way he could. He thanked me for a job well done and let me know I could leave.

      Under other circumstances, I might have offered to stick around and lend a hand, but I was relieved to be excused. There was only one thing left that I could do to help with the investigation, but I had to get far away from human eyes to attempt it.

      I handed my radio over to my babysitter and said goodbye to Colin and the agents before getting astride Tiara.

      Before I could ride away, Agent Delaney’s voice came over the radio. “Make sure that girl knows if she speaks a word of what she’s seen or heard here today, I’ll have her under a federal indictment faster than she can spit.”

      Agent Givens offered me an apologetic glance. My babysitter studied his feet. Colin reached out and took the radio from my babysitter’s hand.

      “Agent Delaney,” Colin was pissed, but I thought he might be showing off too.

      “Who is this?” Delaney demanded. “This is a secure channel.”

      “Her name is Abra Forrester, and she knows the rules,” Colin said, “so how about a thank you instead.”

      Delaney didn’t respond.

      4:44 p.m.

      Nature’s harmony had been disrupted. Even here, on the far side of Casner Canyon, the earth seemed braced in anticipation of disaster.

      The helicopters were still circling Schnebly Hill in the distance. Every shrieking pass they made imprinted new memories in the minds of the wild animals and diminished the details of what they’d seen last night. All I could do was wait for nightfall to chase the humans away — then I could go to work.

      I let Tiara make her own diagonal trail up the side of the mesa. Sundara followed.

      A single tree grew on the top of this mesa. Woodpecker, a most symbolic bird, danced around one thick branch. In esoteric terms, their black and white feathers represent the need to see aspects of life as they are, without the gray shades of denial. The red on the crown chakra represents mental activity and our connection to the Divine.

      Woodpecker began drumming the beats that shamans learn to ride into the other dimensions. I closed my eyes and floated on his rhythmic tune.

      Tiara took a deep breath, her sides expanded underneath me. I released the butter-soft reins of her bridle, a wholly unnecessary device, but one I used to keep humans from suspecting the true degree of our communication. I melted into the warmth of her body. Her legs became my legs, grounding me to the earth as my spirit took flight.

      I’d learned to self induce this trance state by tapping my staff on the ground, but with Woodpecker carrying the tune, I was able to focus all my energy on the journey. I forced my body to relax, to shake off the horror of the day, and be soothed by the life force of the natural world. When I was ready, I raised my arms, the weight of my staff in one hand, my other hand, open and empty. Soon, I was filled with the symphony of life.

      I searched out the heart signatures of those I called friends. I felt them stir in caves, in fallen logs, in arroyos. I showed them all I’d seen of the killer and his path. I asked them to go out at nightfall, to gather all who’d witnessed this human. I would return tonight to speak with them.

      Then I pushed further out to the north. I was without light, without sound. I pushed further still, further than I’d ever attempted to go. I clawed against the phantasmic needles of wind that dug into my body and burned beneath my skin, searching for any echo of Gaagii’s heart signature. Bombs detonated in my head.

      I held the essences of Gaagii and Fox in my heart and pleaded to any that might hear that they would lend their assistance and their protection to my warrior friends.

      Sundara howled from what seemed like a world away, then the world disintegrated and I plummeted into the nothingness.

      Chapter Five

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