Victoria said. When the words passed through her lips a second time, their absurdity nearly drove her to laughter. She took a deep breath to steady herself. "You recall what I told you of my conversation with the Indian singer?"
"About them skin-walkers and the ashes and all that, sure," Cora said. "Don't recollect you saying nothing about walking in no spirit world."
Victoria lifted her chin. "Because I didn't see any reason to mention it, and I did not wish to endure your mockery." The hunter made no reply, so she continued. "While I was keeping watch in the desert during our expedition, I dreamt I could fly over the desert like a bird. I flew to a nearby hill and saw both the skin-walker and your Fodor Glava impostor. They spoke of us."
"Ain't a week goes by but I get a dream of running down one monster or another, even after all this time. Don't mean I'm actually doing it in my sleep."
"That was my conclusion at first, too," Victoria said, "but the singer believed that my spirit left my body and traveled across the desert freely. I have given it a good deal of thought, and I'm not entirely sure I disbelieve him anymore."
"Why's that?"
"Because everything else he told me appears to be accurate."
Cora's hat moved up and down as she nodded. "Wise men is wise men, and I reckon they're the same anywhere you go. Don't matter if he calls himself a professor or a singer or a shaman. Thing is, all them wise folk got a funny way of mixing in what really is with what they think is, and the two don't always match up. Could be this singer of yours is spot-on about the skin-walker woman, but that don't mean every word he says is true."
"Yes, I realize that," Victoria said, "but what choice do we have?"
"We can ride on back to town and play a few hands, maybe win us some drinking money."
"You truly care only for gambling and tippling." Victoria shook her head and sighed. "Go on, then, if you wish. I shall track down this menace myself and kill it if I can. Should I come across your blue-eyed vampire, I will kill him as well, and you will be forever left to wonder who he really was."
"Suit yourself," Cora said.
With that, the hunter resumed her course back the way they had come. Victoria watched her form melt into the evening's shadows, her insides a knot of conflicting emotions. Anger at Cora's belittlement, fear at being left alone in the desert, determination to prove the hunter wrong, to see her boast through and come back alive. Each rose to the surface and slipped beneath it again like onions in a simmering stew. Part of her wanted nothing more than to prod the old mare beneath her into a canter and follow Cora back to town. An evening spent indoors, warm and comfortable, safe from the horrors roaming through the desert, was the loveliest thing she could imagine at that moment.
A breeze hissed through the scrub around her horse's hooves, carrying the promise of a chilly night. Victoria shivered. She could no longer see the hunter's retreating form or hear the steady crunching of her mare's steps on the hard-packed earth. The hunt was hers and hers alone now. She ran a finger along the grip of the revolver on her hip. Cora's revolver. It brought her comfort. The gun had shot and killed more monsters than she could imagine. It would do so once more, even if her hand was not as skilled or practiced at its previous owner.
Straightening up in the saddle, Victoria let her gaze sweep over the landscape sprawled out beneath her. She drew a deep breath. Now was the moment of truth. If she couldn't free her spirit as she had before, she would have to return to town, defeated and humiliated. Worse, their quarry would escape, making a living return to Oxford that much more unlikely.
Victoria bowed her head, closed her eyes, and pictured the world as it would appear through a falcon's eyes.
FIFTEEN
A frown passed over the woman's face. Somewhere nearby, skulking beneath the faint moonlight, she could feel a presence. Like her, it was at once human and inhuman, but it was not ant'iihnii. Closing her eyes, she slipped her skin and rose above the ruined city. Yes, there was a new creature in the desert, one she had never before encountered.