It had spoken to him. In a voice that was deep and dirty and disgustingly raspy. It had spoken in Siouan. And it had read his mind.

Daniel was panting hard through his nose now, his hands starting to tremble. He let it have it. Three shots, two in the head and one to the body. It slumped to the ground, its legs buckling beneath it, the head a bloody mess where his bullets had torn away half the skull.

Then as he watched with his mouth hanging open in horror, the body started to shift and quiver, being pulled up like a puppet on wires until the mess of grey fur and red blood was on its feet again. It was a foul thing. No longer an animal. A sack of fur and bones that had something else inside it, making it writhe and twitch like a body in agony.

He was an Indian. He knew about bad medicine. This was really bad medicine and he had no tools in his hand or his heart to fight it. The thing in the coyote’s skin faced him again with a terrible grimace from its half-face. He could see the inside of its upper palate, the few remaining teeth glinting on a red sea of mucus and blood, the one eye hanging from its socket on a tendril of tissue.

‘Care to join me in my meal?’

It made a jerky movement of its head, like it was struggling for control, and picked up the white-and-pink morsel it had been gnawing when Daniel burst in. A small shoe clung to the end of the dangling matter. Larry’s shoe.

No. No. Larry and Tess were in Calgary. He’d spoken to her less than an hour ago. He was in bed she said. Fast asleep. No. No. No. No.

The coyote that was no longer a coyote pawed at the black plastic trash bag. Something big and round rolled out of it across the white vinyl floor, leaving a trail of black-red sticky mush as it went. The eyes were dead and staring in the head and the black hair stuck to his son’s severed head in matted points. It stopped between Daniel’s spread legs.

Then the coyote that defied its place in the food chain smiled up at Daniel. Not a leer that dogs can make by panting, but a very real, very human smile.

And it watched him as it laughed, a sound that filled the back of Daniel Hawk’s throat as if he were making the diabolical sound himself from a stomach that was rotting and on fire with disease. His vision swam with the horror and he fought a battle to stay conscious. Illusion. That’s all it was. None of it real. Someone was sending him bad medicine and he had to fight it or it would destroy his mind.