Chance knelt and began praying in Zuni over the Suuke’s body.

Calliope came closer, in shock. A week ago, she couldn’t even stand listening to Andres’s stories of emergency response calls. Now, she’d just helped decapitate a monster.

Chance continued praying even as red welts sprang up around his neck like a noose, thick rope burns. “I don’t know what happens to a person who kills a god,” he said. He washed his hands in the snow.

“That was a god? I thought it was a monster … a demon.”

“There’s no difference in Zuni cosmology, mujer. It’s represented as a ko’ko. No distinction. As I said before, there is knowledge not intended for us. I don’t know what the punishment is.”

“Seems to me we’re already living in the punishment.” She ignored the pain searing her pelvic floor and thighs. Braxton Hicks, she told herself, false labor. From the stress.

He nodded, continued chanting, brought the severed head back to the body, then stood.

Amy pulled the truck through the gravel beside them, tires kicking up icy sludge. She pushed open the passenger door, looked at the dead Suuke, said, “Holy fuck, you two are hardcore.”

Calliope’s stomach roiled; a strong premonition that the worst was yet to come. She realized what she’d missed, turned back to Chance, “Where’s the other Suuke?”

“Tied up. The others are guarding it. I didn’t know how to kill it until you showed me.”

“The other one has a bow and arrow. Did you take it?”

“Mara’s holding it.”

“Maybe you should let someone else do it, Chance.” She could see the psychic toll killing a ko’ko had taken on him. His eyes glazed over, his face furrowed with worry lines. The slash across his cheek clotted with dried blood.

“I’ve already gone this far,” he said. “Get in the truck. I’ll get the others.”

“Keep the engine running,” she called to Amy, then grabbed her boot from the tree root and followed Chance up the porch steps.

“You’re too pregnant for this danger, mujer.” He glanced at her belly, which she was supporting with her free hand. “You keep trying to hide it, but I know you’re worried about those twins.”

She ignored him, cocked Susana’s gun.

The house was too quiet, fireplace lighting shadows on the walls. Broken glass crunched under Calliope’s boots, the only sound. “Where are they?” she whispered.

Chance nodded toward Tía’s bedroom.

The Suuke had come after her. And they’d stopped it.

Chance kicked open the door.

Right inside the room, Calliope saw where the Suuke should have been, from the coiled ropes knotted on the floorboards.