23. Twenty-Two #2
I dropped into a long stride, the one I never had to think about. I kept my head low, my eyes sweeping the ground ahead of me, my ears tuned to the wind.
The brush was thick here. The catclaw hooked into the raw skin of my thighs and let go and hooked in again. The pain in my hand was a steady, rhythmic thrum that matched the beat of my heart, keeping me awake, keeping me sharp.
I followed the trail east, toward the big dry wash where the red dirt gave way to deep sand.
This was the place where the radio signal died. Zaroff had run other men to pieces down here. The wash was deep, its banks over my head, lined with thick mesquite that blocked out the starlight.
I found his footprints in the sand. They were ragged, the strides getting shorter, the left heel dragging deep.
He'd hit a patch of prickly pear; he'd broken the pads open, pale green and wet, and dark smears marked the sand where the long yellow spines had gone into his feet and come back out with him.
You're tired, aren't you? I thought. You've never had to run without your boots. You've never had to run with your own blood filling your throat.
The sound coming up the wash wasn't a runner's. It was the sound of a dying animal. A wet, rattling gasp that came every time his chest expanded, his ruined hand scraping against the gravel as he tried to drag himself up the steep bank of the wash.
I stood in the deep sand, my head tilted back, listening. Then I came up the bend where the wash narrowed there and the clay went to slick rock.
The starlight caught him. He was on his knees at the base of the slick rock wall, his good hand clawing at the loose dirt, trying to find a handhold to pull himself up out of the wash. He was shivering so hard his bones seemed to rattle under his skin.
His bare feet were swollen black, covered in dirt and long white cactus spines driven into his flesh. His right arm was tucked against his belly. He heard me, but he didn't turn around. He just stopped clawing at the dirt, his forehead pressing against the cold, red clay of the bank.
I walked up behind him. The sand was cold beneath my feet. The pain in my splinted hand had gone numb, leaving nothing but a dull, heavy ache.
"What's your name?" I said.
It took him a while to find the breath for it. "You know my name."
"That's the one you gave yourself. I want the other one before I kill you."
He turned his head enough to get one eye on me. He was going to keep it, and he wanted me to know that he was keeping it. "You've got my hand," he said. "You'll get my teeth. You don't get that."
I reached down and grabbed him by his gray hair, pulling his head back until the starlight hit his throat.
"You're the stock now," I said.
He tried to scream, but the sound was just a wet bubble of blood that popped on his lips. His good hand came up, fingers clawing at my face, nails catching the raw skin of my cheek. I didn't flinch. Nothing he had left in him was worth flinching for.
I leaned down and bit down on his throat.
Zaroff's body locked rigid under me, his back arching up off the sand, his good hand clawing at my back with frantic, useless strength.
I didn't let go. I bit deeper, my jaws locking onto the gristle and the windpipe under it, feeling the frantic, dying pulse of his heart through my teeth. I tore my head sideways, and the skin gave way with a sharp, wet rip.
He sagged. His body fell back into the sand, his head rolling sideways, his eyes wide and fixed on the stars. I spat the blood out onto his chest. It looked black in the starlight.
Then I sat in the sand beside him until my breath slowed, the blood dripping from my chin onto my knees. My hand was throbbing again, the pain returning with a vengeance now that the run was over.
When he was dead, I reached down with my good left hand and found a wedge of limestone in the gravel with a thin edge on it.
I forced my fingers into his mouth. His jaw hung slack and heavy, and it fought me anyway. I used the stone to chip at the base of his front teeth.
It took longer than the run had. My hand was shaking, the bone of his skull hard and stubborn, but I didn't stop until I had three of them out.
The human teeth were long and white, capped with gold at the back.
I took the wire necklace of boar tusks from my neck, and I threaded the wire through the roots of Zaroff's teeth, wrapping the copper tight until they sat right in the middle of the tusks.
He got to keep the name. It was the only thing he took with him.
I left him there in the deep sand of the wash. The real coyotes of the ridge were already calling, their high, yipping voices carrying over the flat on the midnight wind. They knew the smell of blood.
"He's yours," I said to the desert.
I turned my back on the wash and started the long walk back to the pass. The walk was harder. The adrenaline was gone, leaving my body to feel the full weight of the cold and the pain. I limped through the scrub, my bare feet bleeding into the caliche, my splinted arm held tight against my ribs.
But I didn't stop.
The mouth of the pass was still there, a gray gap between the black walls of rock. They'd built a small, quiet fire of mesquite roots behind the flatbed, the yellow light dancing on the iron wheels.
John was sitting on a flat stone near the fire, his rifle resting across his knees.
He didn't stand up when I walked into the light. He just reached out. His big hands came to my face, palms rough and warm against my cold skin, fingers catching my jaw, pressing into my cheeks.
"Coyote," he said.
I let my head fall forward, my forehead resting against his chest, right over the scar. "It's done," I said. "Take me home. I'm not letting you out of my sight ever again."