aura and extended it toward the presence. Black as burnt wood, the channel of energy stretched out over the desert. The creature took notice of it, and the woman filled its heart with a desire to seek her out. Once the seed of thought had taken root, she returned to her body and waited.
She did not need to wait long. As the creature approached, she could feel its intense hunger, its desire to feed on her, but she did not fear it. Not here, in this ancient place once inhabited by the ancestral enemies of her people. Here, the veil between worlds was thin; the ruins hummed with spiritual power. Other Dine feared and shunned this place, calling it dangerous and evil, but to her, it was a place of power.
When the monster stepped into view across the remains of the kiva, she opened her eyes. It looked like a man, but its eyes burned with an inhuman radiance.
"Stay, demon," she said in the American tongue.
The figure halted.
"What do you want of me?" she asked.
"Your blood," the demon replied.
"You will not have it," the woman said.
The demon snarled at her. In response, the woman bent her will around it, testing the strength of its mind. Finding it weak, she smiled again. This creature could be of use.
"You will help me."
The blue eyes flickered with hesitation for only a moment. "How?"
"We are both creatures of the night," the woman said, her own eyes gleaming red. "There is a woman who lives near this place. She hunts those such as us. I must kill her, and you will help me."
"A woman hunter?" the demon asked. "Just so happens I'm looking for one, myself. Yours got a name?"
The woman felt anger flowing from the creature in great dark waves. Perhaps controlling him would be easier than she thought.
Her elation was short-lived, vanishing beneath an unexpected shadow of regret. How would her father look at her if he knew what she was? The daughter of a singer, now a skin-walker and companion of demons. Could she make him believe that it was for the protection of all Dine that she did these things? Surely the warrior spirit in him would admire her bravery and determination to right the wrongs done to them. Yet all she could see at that moment were his eyes, filled with disappointment.
The demon was waiting for her answer.
She drew herself up to her full height and looked into his eyes. "Her name is Cora Oglesby."
The ground dropped away as Victoria rushed upward. The air whistled around her, but she could not feel its chill. She spun around, ecstatic in the giddy weightlessness, the absolute freedom. Her eyes drank in the view, marveling at how the world changed when one saw it from the sky. The rational aristocrat in her mind still insisted it was a dream. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't; she no longer cared.
She wanted to continue sailing through the sky, a hawk drifting effortlessly on the night air, but time was short. Taking herself in hand, she turned her gaze eastward, down the cliff and on toward the horizon. A panic filled her when she realized she felt nothing in that direction. No familiar sense of darkness, no ominous shadow on her mind. She waited for a few minutes, hoping that the sensation would come to her in time. When it didn't, her heart sank. How had she done it before? It wasn't through any conscious act that she could remember, but she had believed it all to be a dream then, acting with the carefree trust that comes naturally in dreams. If only she could recover that same instinct.
Perhaps she was too high up. She swooped toward the earth, picturing herself as a bird with wings swept backward in a graceful dive. The ground rose to meet her. Banking this way and that, she skimmed along just above the tallest bushes. Whimsy guided her course as she lost herself again in the wondrous sensations.
Mesas, dark and brooding, loomed against the horizon ahead. Below her, the ground swelled and receded like ocean waves as she flew over dry riverbeds and small, rolling hills. She wondered how others with this gift, the Navajo spirit walkers mentioned by the old Indian, ever thought of returning to themselves. The spirit world was so free, so invigorating and limitless. She never wanted to trap herself in her small, confined prison of a body again.