“Thank God you’re alive,” Davy called back. “But it’s okay, Lani. We found Quentin down the mountain. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Once again there was movement in the passageway. “The killer’s still in here, Davy. It’s not Quentin!” Lani howled. “Go back, Davy, before he kills us both.”
“Davy!” Mitch Johnson called out. “Did you say Davy? Not little Davy Ladd. Come on in, Davy. I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt anybody. You’re right. It was all Quentin.”
Now there was movement again, but not in the passageway. Now it was in the cave itself. “Keep talking, little girl,” Mitch Johnson whispered hoarsely. “Just keep talking. I’ll find you, you little bitch, if it’s the last goddamned thing I do.”
Another match flickered to life.
“Lani,” Davy demanded. “What’s going on in there? Who’s in there with you?”
For a moment Lani was quiet. Mitch Johnson was an implacable enemy—more determined to find and destroy her than he was concerned about his own capture.
Nana Dahd had told Lani more than once that the Tohono O’othham only kill to eat or to save their own lives. In relating the story of the evil Ohb, Rita had always said how proud she was that, in the moment when Diana Ladd might have killed Andrew Carlisle, she had chosen instead to spare him, trusting his punishment to the Mil-gahn system of criminal justice.
In a moment of understanding that went far beyond her years, and far beyond anything Mitch Johnson had told her, Lani understood that somehow, still alive and in prison, Andrew Carlisle had taken that piece of Tohono O’othham honor and turned it into something evil. He had used it cheawogid—to infect—someone else with the same evil that had fueled and driven him.
Nana Dahd had died too soon to know how wrong she was. But Lani knew. The telltale cheposid—the brand—Mitch Johnson had burned into her breast was proof enough that, as long as he lived, so did Andrew Carlisle.
Those thoughts streaked through Lani Walker’s mind as she sat bat-still in the cave, watching the momentary light of the match flickering in the darkness and listening as Mitch came stumbling toward her. Had she screamed again, the echoes might have thrown him off and sent him in the wrong direction, but suddenly she knew that was the wrong thing to do. Instead of hiding from the evil Ohb, Bat Meeter wanted him to find her.
“I’m here,” she said quietly, pulling herself to her feet. “I’m waiting.” A storm of needles and pins shot down her numbed legs. She had to cling to the stalagmite to keep from falling, but she held her ground.
“Lani!” Davy shouted. “Please. What’s going on?”
“He has a gun, Davy,” she said, speaking slowly in Tohono O’othham. “His name is Mitch—Mitch Johnson. The evil Ohb sent him here. He wants to kill us both.”
“Speak English, you little bitch,” Mitch Johnson swore. “You’re a goddamned American, speak English.”
He was only a matter of yards away from her now, creeping along the wall on the same path Lani had followed, as that match, too, flickered and burned itself out. Pulling herself around the rock, she stood directly in his path.
“You’ll have to come get me, Mitch,” she taunted. “I’m right here. I’m waiting.”
Grunting with effort, she tugged off one of her boots. “Here,” she said. She tossed the boot a few feet in front of her. The explosion that followed reverberated back and forth inside the cavern. Clinging to the cold stalagmite, grateful for its solid presence, Lani thought there had been a dozen shots instead of only one.
She had ducked her head and closed her eyes, so the flash of light hadn’t affected her. But her ears were roaring. From far away she could hear Davy calling to her. “Lani! Lani! Are you all right?”
“I’m still here, Mitch,” Lani said again, not raising her voice, barely speaking above a whisper. “I’m here and I’m waiting.”
Carefully judging the distance, she pulled off the second boot as well, tossing it slightly behind her and to the left. She heard him rush forward, close enough that she felt him brushing past her as she ducked back behind the stalagmite once more. There was another explosion of gunfire, another ear-shattering roar. And then nothing.
For a second or two Lani thought she really had gone deaf. She was afraid that the silence that suddenly surrounded her would always be there, that it would never lift. But then, from very far away, she heard Davy calling again, pleading this time.
“Lani, please. Answer me. Are you all right?”
There was a groan—little more than a moan, really. It came from beyond Lani’s hiding place. From beyond and below it. From the bottom of the hole into which Lani herself had almost fallen.
She heard the sound and was chilled. It meant that down there somewhere, far beneath the surface of the cave, the evil Ohb was still alive. He had taken her bait. The boot had done its work, but the fall hadn’t killed him. Even now she could hear movement as he struggled to rise from where he had fallen. Lani knew with a certainty that she had never known before that as long as Mitch Johnson lived, every member of Diana and Brandon Walker’s family would be in mortal danger.
Coming out from behind the stalagmite, Lani felt around her in the dark. She remembered being told once that limestone caves are fragile—that the formations break off easily and that they need to be protected from human destruction.
“I’m okay, Davy,” she called. “But don’t come in right now. I think he’s hurt, but he may still be able to shoot. We need help. Go get someone with guns and lights and bulletproof vests.”
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’m fine,” she answered. “Go now. Please go!”
She heard Davy shuffling back down the passageway just as Mitch Johnson groaned again. Feeling her way around the floor of the cavern, she located another stalagmite, one that was much smaller than the hulking giant behind which she had hidden. This one was about a foot in circumference and three to four feet high.
“Ants are very strong,” Nana Dahd had told her. “When they have to, they can carry more than their own weight.”
Positioning her back against the large stalagmite, she pushed against the smaller one with both her feet and all her might. She pushed as hard as she could, straining until stars of effort blazed inside her head. At first it seemed as though the rock would never come loose. But then she remembered who she was—Mualig Siakam—a powerful medicine woman, someone who, with the power of her singing, could determine who would live and who would die.
Had Mitch Johnson been a little baby, surely the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, Kulani O’oks, would have refused to sing.
Pushing again, Lani Walker felt the stalagmite give way slightly, rocking gently and trying to come loose from its moorings like a giant baby tooth in need of pulling. She pushed again and the rock was looser.
All things in nature go in fours. It was the fourth push that broke the huge rock free. She felt it tottering toward her and she had to push it yet again to send it tumbling in the other direction. She heard it scrape across the lip of the hole. Then, for a space of several seconds, there was no sound at all, then there was a muffled bump as the limestone boulder hit something soft and came to rest.
Holding her breath, Lani listened. In the whole of the cave, except for the steady drip of water, there was no other sound, no other being. Mitch Johnson was dead. In the emptiness of his passing, Lani realized that the spirits of Betraying Woman and Andrew Philip Carlisle had disappeared as well. The three of them had joined huhugam—those who are gone.