The Visitant: Book I of the Anasazi Mysteries Read Free

night sky, the cold air sparkled.
    A whisper, barely audible, touched Ash Girl’s ears: “Come this way. This way.”
    Ash Girl cried, “Where are you?” and trotted up the trail.
    He stood in a pool of moonlight twenty body lengths from the cliff. His pointed ears and gray fur glimmered as though carved from ice.
    He lifted one foot, then brought it down with a powerful thump. Then he lifted the other foot, but left it suspended in the air.
    “Do you know Death’s name, Ash Girl?”
    She edged toward him. “Death has a name?”
    “You used to know. Don’t you remember?”
    “No.” She shook her head.
    His foot came down violently, and he began Dancing, his arms swaying up and down. The fringes on his white buckskin shirt and pants licked out like tongues of silver flame.
    “Hurry,” he said, “run past me. Before she sees you.”
    Ash Girl looked around. “Who? Before who sees me?”
    “Hurry! Don’t you see her? There she is!” He tore the war club from his belt and pointed behind Ash Girl.
    She whirled in terror. “What?” Only black shadows met her gaze, but in places the darkness seemed to ripple and sway. “I see nothing! What are you talking about?”
    She started to turn back, and glimpsed the war club just before it slammed into her head, staggering her. She screamed. “No, please! Not now!”
    Two Hearts waved the club, and the wooden muzzle of his mask dropped open. A fetid coppery odor gushed out, as though he’d been gnawing on a long-dead carcass.
    Ash Girl cried, “I don’t care where the voices live! Leave me alone!”
    His mask lowered, and eerie, inhuman laughter split the night. Ash Girl ran.
    Two Hearts’ feet pounded after her.
    “Why are you doing this?” she cried, and glanced over her shoulder.
    He Danced less than a body’s length away, spinning and leaping, swinging the club over his head. “Do you know Death’s name?”
    “No! I already told you, I …”
    Her foot tangled in a clump of dry grass, and she sprawled face-first across the ground. Before she could rise, he stood over her, his wolf’s mask glowing. The fringes on his white sleeves trembled.
    He whispered, “Death stalks the desert, Ash Girl. She has been in the south, skimming creeks for moss, and chewing on rotting bones to survive. At this moment, she watches you, begging you to call her by name, so that she might spare you. She is hungry. Too hungry to control herself unless she knows you. Call out to her, Ash Girl. Call her by name. Tell her she knows you.”
    Ash Girl shook her head. “But I do not know her name!”
    He gripped his war club in both hands. “Come closer, Ash Girl. Look at her reflection in my eyes, and you will remember.”
    Ash Girl forced herself to look, but she saw only emptiness, and darkness.
    “Two Hearts, please, I see nothing.”
    “Oh, gods.” Sobs strained his voice. “She relishes terror even more than living flesh!”
    His muzzle fell open again, and he began breathing on Ash Girl. His breath warmed her ankles and legs, then touched her hand and moved up her arm toward her face.
    “What’s happening?” she cried. Gods breathed upon the dead to bring them back to life. “Why are you breathing life into me? I’m not dead!”
    A shudder went through him.
    As though waking from a terrible nightmare, he slowly lifted his head. Moonlight gilded his fur. He knelt so still that his sharp teeth caught the light and held it like polished pyrite mirrors. He turned toward the ruins in the distance.
    Ash Girl jerked around to look.
    They had built their own village, Hillside Village, alongside the massive half-moon-shaped structure that they believed to be Talon Town. In comparison, the rectangular buildings of Hillside looked pathetically small and crude.
    “At the end,” he whispered, “witches filled the town. Did you know that? Talon Town became a hive of evil. The witches dug up the burials and robbed the corpses, taking any object that contained a shred of the