A few feet away, butcher knife dangling from his flaccid hand, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, Buick lay on his stomach. Chance knelt down, checked his neck for a pulse then shook his head, murmuring words in Zuni over Buick’s lifeless body.

Calliope felt sick. The stranger who’d called himself a friend. She wished she’d been kinder to him. Wished he’d never come to Tía’s house. This wasn’t a sanctuary but a snare; it was a fucking wasp’s nest.

Beside Buick on the ground, Mara’s rifle, split in two like a toy gun.

Mara slumped in the corner near the door Calliope had opened minutes before, her breath shallow and raspy, an arrow pitted into her left side, well below her heart. Her shirt was blood-soaked. She cupped her palms where the arrow protruded from her body. Her eyes fluttered. She opened her mouth to speak, no words formed, only a gurgling sound.

Calliope let out a sob, scanned the rest of the room.

Where was the Suuke?

Chance lifted Mara, motioned Calliope, “Let’s go.”

The arrow had punctured her lung, Calliope could tell by the rattling sounds of the old woman’s breathing. If they pulled the arrow out, she’d bleed to death. They needed a doctor.

“The Suuke?” She imagined it crouched under the bed, a true bogeyman. Or woman. Chance had said they were both male and female. Which had they killed, husband or wife?

“Could be anywhere,” Chance said, grunting, as he repositioned Mara so he could carry her through the bedroom doorway.

Why hadn’t the other Suuke shown itself? Why hadn’t it attacked in the front yard while they stood over its dead partner?

Chance crossed the threshold, turned back to Calliope as if reading her mind, said, “Hurry, mujer. I can’t fight and take care of you.”

She nodded, grabbed a blanket from the couch on the way out.

From the snow-covered gravel, Amy picked up the Suuke’s machete-like knife. She wiped the blood in the snow. “This thing slayed a monster. It could come in handy.” Amy dropped the knife into the back of Mara’s truck, then climbed back into the driver’s seat. “You coming, momma?”

Calliope nodded.

Before she climbed into the seat with Amy and Eunjoo, she turned toward the crow-covered piñon in the distance. In the starlight, she thought she could make out the silhouette of a coyote, howling up at the sky. But if anything was howling, the truck’s engine drowned it out.

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FOUR

DEADFALL

All the roads were dirt.

As Amy drove over the rutted road, Calliope dressed Eunjoo in Phoenix’s clothes, though she didn’t have shoes. They’d left those in Tía’s bathroom. She put two pairs of socks on the girl’s feet and cranked the heater up, then massaged her own belly from the painful jolting.