Dead Roses for a Blue Lady (23 page)

"Wiley? You home?" Cade called out as he climbed the stairs. He pushed on the door of the shack, which swung open, revealing a table, a chair, a pot-bellied stove, and a bed made of rags. There was no sign of Wiley.

Cade climbed back down the stairs, scratching the back of his head. He glanced around the tangle of disused mining equipment and ore carts that littered the compound.

Wherever the prospector was, it couldn't be far away, since he had not taken Sookie with him. Cade took a deep breath to steady himself and took a step in the direction of the outhouse.

"Wiley! You in there?"

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"
'Sheriff-
—
Over here!"

Cade heaved a sigh of relief and trotted over to the mine entrance in time to see Wiley emerge from the darkness, a miner's helmet clamped on his grizzled head. Wiley Simms was tall and rangy, with shoulder-length gray hair and a grizzled beard. His face was as brown and seamed as a seasoned catcher's mitt from the long years spent under the Southwestern sun. His teeth were yellow and stubby as corn kernels, but nowhere near as tightly spaced as those on a fresh ear. In his canvas jeans, denim work shirt, and square-toed brogans he looked like a cross between Gabby Hayes and Tommy Chong.

Cade didn't really know how old Wiley was, but he assumed the Old Timer was somewhere between fifty and sixty-five. When questioned, Wiley was somewhat vague on the subject, but from all accounts he had been squatting at the old mining facility since the Vietnam War.

Wiley made his living, such as it was, from sifting through the old mines that dotted the territory for various semi-precious metals and stones, such as copper and turquoise.

Where once he had to carry his finds to the nearest field office, now Wiley sold the pieces of jasper and nephrite and chunks of copper ore he pulled out of the rugged terrain directly to the Coyotero, who used the stones to make necklaces and utilized the copper in the glazes on their pottery.

The Coyotero did not pay him in cash, but with vouchers he could redeem at Uncle Billy's store. That way Wiley was able to provide himself with all the foodstuffs and fuel he needed, as well as feed for his beloved Sookie. It wasn't the life of Riley, but it wasn't bad for a man who talked to his burro and had a horror of being around more than four people at a time. But as Uncle Billy was fond of saying: no one came to Nonesuch to strike it rich; they came to escape the lives they left behind.

"Sorry I dint hear you callin' th' first time, Sheriff. I wuz down checkin' on th' timbers, seein' they wuz shored up proper," the prospector explained, switching off the small battery-powered lantern affixed to the brim of his helmet. "You got's t'watch these ole mines, as they're as likely as not to cave in on you."

"So I've heard. You doing okay out here, Wiley?"

"I ain't failed back down th' shit-chute, if that's what you're gettin' at," Wiley replied. "I put in a new floor since then—replaced the one that was et up by the dry-rot. Tain't right when a man can't take a decent squat without tumbling into th' bowels of the earth. By the by, I ain't never thanked you proper for savin' me, Sheriff. I don't know what would have become of me if you hadn't come along when you did."

"Don't mention it, Wiley. Please. Don't."

Having satisfied himself that Wiley was safe and sound, Cade bid the prospector farewell, climbed back into his Jeep, and sped off in the direction of the next stop on the perimeter check, which just happened to be his mother.

"Why won't you let us move you into town?"

"Because towns are not the way of my people," Changing Woman replied simply. She

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) stood in the shade of her one-room adobe, carefully watering her herb garden with a hollowed out gourd. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse made on her own loom. Her dark hair, liberally shot with gray, hung in twin braids. Although she was the oldest female in the community, she was in robust health and possessed a mind as sharp as a knife.

"Besides, I can take care of myself."

"I know you're perfectly capable of looking after yourself," Cade said. "I'm just thinking about the kids. Wouldn't it be easier to train them if you lived closer?"

"The training they must undergo is not about ease or comfort," Changing Woman said sternly. "You lived too long amongst the white man, Skinwalker. You have learned their soft ways."

"You're the one who sent me out amongst them, Mother."

Changing Woman paused, as if weighing her son's words, then nodded. "You are correct, my son. I cannot fault you there. I am only your mother by flesh. Another mothered your soul."

He frowned and quickly looked away. Even after more than a decade, it was difficult to think of Edna Cade, the woman who raised him from infancy and loved and protected him as fiercely as any child born of her womb, without a tear coming to his eye.

"Besides," Changing Woman said with a shrug. "It is in the nature of a shamaness to live apart. It is how we receive our visions." She turned to study her son. "How did you sleep last night, Skinwalker?"

Cade blinked. "Beg pardon?"

"Your sleep last night. Was it troubled?"

"As a matter of fact it was."

"It is the shaman in you," Changing Woman said, nodding approvingly. "The wolf in your soul recognizes the presence of an enemy."

"Enemy? What kind of enemy?"

"The oldest," she said, her eyes narrowing. "The one your father's blood has battled for millennia. I caught its scent last night. I have been working rituals ever since, trying to determine the exact nature of the beast. It is old, that much I am sure of—and hungry."

"Mother, I still don't understand...what are you talking about?"

"There is an
enkidu
nosing about the perimeter."

Cade's heart went cold as the word slipped from his mother's lips. "Are you certain?"

"As sure as death," she replied. "Call a council meeting for this afternoon."

"That settles it. You're coming back into town with me."

"Don't be silly, boy!" Changing Woman said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I have things to do before the meeting. Give your sister my love."

"You can tell Rosie that yourself; she'll be at the meeting, too."

"Silly me! Maybe I am getting long in the tooth, eh?" Changing Woman said with a sly smile, then dropped onto all fours and loped off in the direction of the sweat lodge.

The Nonesuch Council held its meetings in the back of the general store. Each of the

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) various species that lived within the community elected two from their number to represent the whole. Changing Woman and Rosie represented the
coyotero,
Skinner Cade and Uncle Billy represented the
vargr,
and Cissy and Nascha Martinez, the town's schoolteacher, represented the humans.

Cully, the council's unofficial Sergeant-At-Arms and sole ogre, sat on a chair near the door, alternately scratching himself and staring at his feet. At ten years of age, he stood six-foot-six and weighed three hundred pounds, with a wide forehead that sloped backward, like that of a bull gorilla. A pair of tusk-buds were just starting to jut from his lower jaw. Long, curved talons, like those of a wolverine, grew in place of toenails on his bare feet.

Uncle Billy opened the meeting by speaking aloud what the others were thinking. "Why was this council called, sheriff?"

Skinner glanced at his mother "I think it's best you address that question to Changing Woman."

All eyes followed the shamaness, dressed in a cape stitched together from rabbit pelts, a fetish necklace of turquoise and jasper hung about her neck, as she got to her feet. "Last night I caught scent of a thing I hoped would never cross my path again. There is
enkidu
near-1 "

by-Uncle Billy shifted uneasily and the younger members of the council exchanged blank stares.

"I'm sorry if I am being dense, Changing Woman—but what is this 'inkaidoo'?" Nascha asked.

"It is what you humans call a vampire."

Naschas eyes widened in alarm and the others began talking rapidly amongst themselves.

Uncle Billy got to his feet, waving his hands for silence.

"Quiet! Quiet, now! We can't let emotion get the better of us!" He turned to face the shamaness. "Are you
sure
about that, Changing Woman?"

"There is no mistaking their scent."

"I'll grant you that," Uncle Billy said with a nod. "They might be able to fool the eye, but the nose is another matter."

"What's it doing out here?" Rosie asked.

"Maybe it's come to seek sanctuary." Cissy suggested. " Maybe it wants to join us."

"Wants to destroy us is more likely!" Changing Woman spat in disgust.

"You don't know that!" Cissy retorted.

Changing Woman's eyes narrowed and when she spoke it was with a growl in her voice.

"Do not tell
me
what I do or do not know, little one! But I will
tell you
this: vampires are not like weres or ogres. While we may not be human, we are at least
alive.
We exist within the mortal cycle of birth and age and death. Our span of years is long, but it is not without end.

"The
enkidu,
however, are born of death. They are demons riding around in the flesh of dead men. Theirs is an approximation of life, not life itself. And their appetite is not merely for the blood of the living, but the negative energy that arises from human misery and suffering. Of all the Pretending Races, they are the most devious of all. For countless centuries they have been the blood enemy of the vargr."

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"But you are
coyotero,
not
vargr"
Cissy pointed out. "What quarrel have you with them?"

"While I may find many things wrong with the
vargr,
I cannot find fault with their mistrust of vampires. And, unlike most of you, I have
seen
an
enkidul
I know what they are capable of.

"It was a long time ago, back when I was a girl in Arizona. Except it wasn't called Arizona back then. There was a trading post my people frequented with a small village around it, composed mostly of Pimas. The Pima knew what the
coyotero
were, but did not speak of it to the Anglos and the Spanish, who thought we were some form of Apache. When we would come into town to trade, the Pima would simply go inside their shelters and stay there until we left.

"The man who ran the trading post was named Alvarez. His wife helped him with his business and they had a baby girl. Mrs. Alvarez did not seem afraid of the 'natives' as we were called, and Mr. Alvarez did not cheat us much, as white men go, and actually seemed to take pleasure in the company of my father, Crooked Leg.

"Then one day we went to the trading post, only to find everyone there dead. The Pima, the Alvarezes...every last one of them were dead, many still in their beds. At first my father thought it was one of the white diseases, like diphtheria or small pox. Then we found several of the Pima hung by their heels like slaughtered deer, their throats slit so that they bled out into pottery jars.

"My father started sniffing around, trying to catch the scent of the man who had slain his friends. With all the dead bodies lying around, the smell of death was everywhere. But soon Crooked Leg caught another scent: something
like
death, but not as natural.

"We found the
enkidu
curled up inside a cedar hope chest in the Alvarez's cabin. It wore the body of a white man, dressed in a fine suit and hard leather shoes, and had long dark hair and pale skin. The drained corpse of the Alvarez baby was clutched to his breast like a doll. When Crooked Leg pulled the
enkidu
from its hiding place, its eyes flew open and I could see they were red and full of blood.

"The vampire struggled, but his movements were sluggish, like those of a drunken man wakened from a stupor. When we dragged him outside, the
enkidu
began to scream and, to our surprise, his skin turned black and blistered and, after several seconds of agony, he caught fire.

"Crooked Leg consulted with the shaman, who poked through the charred remains of the
enkidu
and told my father to place all the bodies in the trading post and burn them, as we would diseased horse blankets. In the end, the Spanish used it as an excuse to launch another strike against the Apache in the region.

"Decades passed before I learned that the thing responsible for the massacre was an
enkidu.
I have counted myself lucky I have not made the acquaintance of another of their kind. There is too much sun and open space for their liking in this part of the country. But that is changing now, with the growth of the western cities like Phoenix and Albuquerque.

Wherever there are human cities, you will always find three things: rats, pigeons and vampires."

"Now, Changing Woman. I wouldn't say
all enkidu
are like the one you mentioned." As the shamaness opened her mouth, Uncle Billy held a hand up to stem her protest. "True, they
do
have a reputation for evil unique even amongst the shadow races. But they ain't
all
bad.
One of the best friends I ever had was a vampire! We rode together for a while, back

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) in the old days. He met his final death tryin' to save my life. Granted, our friendship was an unusual one—but it was genuine. For all we know this
enkidu
is like the one I was partners with. He was looking to start things anew in this country, just as we are. We shouldn't be quick to assume the worst. After all, there is not one of us here—Miz Cissy and Miz Nascha excepted—who ain't tasted human flesh."