Without breaking stride, he cocked the lever of the shotgun across his chest, took aim, and blew the tsi-nook closest to her apart.
She flinched in reaction to the ringing sound of the gun followed by the shrill scream of the tsi-nook. Blood from the creature sprayed all over her body. She tensed, unsure of what to expect from the blood touching her skin. Luckily, nothing happened.
Before she could think to breathe again, Jess kept firing, rapidly blowing apart every one of them in turn. Their screams echoed around her until the night swallowed the sound and silenced it forever.
Until he took aim at her head.
Eyes wide, she seized in terror. What did I do? Why would he kill her now? She stared straight into the barrel. Black and evil, it gave her a profound understanding of the people he'd killed.
Don't. The word caught in her throat.
His features stone cold, he fired.
Abigail sucked her breath in sharply at the sound, expecting pain and a recoil that would knock her off her feet. Instead, she remained intact.
No pain. No impact.
Jess continued toward her, taking aim again. It wasn't until he fired another round that she realized he was shooting past her and not at her.
Thank God, she hadn't moved. Then he might have really killed her.
In fact, he didn't stop shooting until he was standing right beside her. Only then did he put the gun down and scan the darkness to make sure there was nothing else out there.
The wind whistled around them, and out in the distance, she heard the cry of a single coyote. Though to be honest, she was amazed she could hear anything, given the last few minutes.
"Is that our friend?" she asked Jess.
"No." Jess tilted his head back and sniffed the air like a lycanthrope might if he was tracking someone. "They're bounty hunters."
"Pardon?"
Jess's memories burned as he was pulled back in time to age fifteen. Then, as now, there had been a chill in the warm air. But no one except him could feel it. Bart had left him holed up in a small dugout on the side of a mountain out in the middle of nowhere Arizona. A posse had been chasing after them, and he'd had nothing more than a handful of bullets.
He'd been dead asleep and then awakened to nothing other than his heart racing. As he tried to force himself back to sleep, he'd smelled that haunting stench that defied explanation.
It was the same odor he smelled on the wind now. He glanced over to Choo Co La Tah. "What's going on?"
"We must get to the Valley. Quickly. Coyote is growing desperate."
Putting his hands on his hips, Sasha stopped in front of them. "Coyote got boys." He jerked his chin toward the bodies. "And a lot of them. What the hell did we just fight?"
Abigail was even more grateful to the wolf. "Thank you for asking. That's what I wanted to know."
Jess didn't answer as he locked gazes with Choo Co La Tah. "What is out there?"
"You're asking me a question you already know the answer to. And yes, they have been after you before.... Many times."
Ren sighed. "They're skinwalkers who lost wagers to Coyote. Now they serve as his bounty hunters."
"They're the same as you?" Abigail asked.
Ren shook his head. "I'm a shape-shifter, not a skinwalker. They are the nastiest of creatures. Evil so foul that it rots them from the inside out." He turned to Jess. "That's the odor you smell. Nothing else like it."
Sasha growled. "What are their powers?"
"They can track as well as you do. Maybe better. They can shift forms, but only so long as they hold the pelt or feather of the animal they want to become next to their skin. Superhuman strength."
Choo Co La Tah agreed. "And halitosis so bad, it could knock down a building."