Authors: Violet Walker
Cat turned to her and grabbed her hand.
“We need to go,” he said.
He pulled her from the break room and down a hallway next to it that she hadn’t noticed before. Charlie followed behind them.
“So, Amanda’s in on this too?” Diana asked.
“Of course,” Cat said, “she’s my sister.”
Diana stopped dead in the hallway before they reached the exit door. Cat turned back towards her and said, “Diana, please. We don’t have time to get into it now. I promise I’ll tell you everything once we start on the road.”
Diana looked into Cat’s eyes once more and nodded. She allowed herself to be lead through the door to a back alley.
There, a bright red Mercedes waited for them. Amanda stepped out of the driver’s seat.
“You don’t have much time,” she said handing the keys off to Cat, “They’re close.”
“Thanks,” he said to her. He moved past Amanda and into the driver’s seat. Amanda stepped away and then turned to Diana. She gave Diana one last full glare before she turned back to Cat and said, “I hope you’re right about this.”
“I hope so too,” Cat answered from the car.
Amanda looked Diana up and down one last time before she moved back to the exit door and into the building.
“Come on,” Charlie said to Diana, now taking the hand that Cat had dropped and leading her towards the passenger side door.
Charlie stopped before he could open the door. His body suddenly became rigid and tense.
Diana had to look over his shoulder to see what had caused him such distress.
When she saw what was on the other side, she screamed.
The second black cougar she had seen that day stared at her, haunches pressed downward licking its lips.
This cougar was several times larger than Charlie had been as a panther and there was a ferocity in its gaze that Charlie simply did not possess.
Diana felt herself being shoved into the Mercedes. The car door slammed behind her.
“Go!” Charlie shouted to them, “I’ll hold it off.”
“Catch up with us at the Westward Crossing,” Cat called back before gunning the car and taking off down the dark alley way and out towards the busy street ahead.
Diana looked back in the rearview mirror. Charlie had disappeared and now she saw two black cougars locked jaw to jaw. She gasped when she saw the large, fierce looking cougar swipe its large paw and knock Charlie to the ground.
“Don’t worry about Charlie,” Cat said as they turned a corner on the busy street and he slowed the car down. Clearly hoping to blend into traffic, “he knows when to retreat. He’s just trying to give us time to get away.”
“Who was that?” Diana asked. Cat looked over at her quizzically and she rephrased the question. “I mean, the other cougar, who was that?”
“We don’t know,” Cat answered, “definitely female. The largest ones always are. Probably a Navajo.”
“You mean other tribes can...do...what you do...too?” Diana said, unsure of the proper term for what she had seen.
“Shift?” he asked supplying the term for her, “yes.”
“But,” Diana said, “you said that the whole...salt woman...cougar...thing was a Zuni legend.”
He gave a derisive snort.
“You whites are not the only ones who like to appropriate other cultures,” he said, “shifting is an ancient knowledge given to the Zunis. It takes years of study and practice to be able to master it. Years ago, Zuni traitors gave our ancient secrets to the Navajo tribe so that they could use it against us.”
“Why would they do that?” Diana asked. She knew that the Navajo and the Zuni’s had a bit of a...difficult history. But as far as she knew, the tribes had never been in a full out war. And she never imagined that they would use Zuni culture as a weapon. Then again, she could never have imagined any of this.
“Why do humans do anything?” Cat asked as they turned a corner and set out on the road towards the open freeway, “you’ve studied Anthropology. You must have seen enough human wars and skirmishes throughout the centuries to understand.”
“Different cultures value different things,” Diana said. She had never believed in simple answers. Especially to questions about human nature.
“On the surface,” Cat answered, “but, in the end it boils down to one thing. Humans fight each other for power.”
Diana tried to think of a rebuttal to that. Some war or conflict that had some other motive. That would prove Cat wrong.
Still, when you got right down to it, she had to admit that he had a point. In every major conflict she could remember either from history or her anthropology courses, power over something or someone had been at the very heart.
Rather than admit this however, she decided it was best to change the subject.
“Why do they want me?” She asked.
“Because you have the blood of the Salt Woman,” Cat said.
“The...what?” Diana asked. “You mean the Salt mother? The one from the salt lake?”
“Yes,” Cat answered.
“But that’s not…”
“Diana, I think we’ve gone way beyond impossible at this point, wouldn’t you say?” Cat asked.
Diana opened her mouth to give him some kind of response to this but she found that she couldn’t. She found that, after everything that had happened to her that day, she couldn’t combat anything with logic or reason or even science.
Still, she could not accept this. The idea that she was some kind of...goddess reincarnated or something...it was laughable. She didn’t have any remarkable traits. She had no skills in fighting, she had no religion or spirituality to speak of, and she hadn’t even been the best in her class in school.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing to distinguish her from any other person on the street.
“How do you know it’s me?” She asked, “I mean...how do you know that I’m this...reincarnation or whatever.”
“We don’t know for sure,” Cat said, “but the fact that you were attacked, and the fact that you felt the glow of the talisman make a very strong case.”
“So, this could all be a mistake?” Diana asked.
“It’s possible,” Cat said, “but I don’t think so.”
“What makes you so sure?” Diana asked.
Cat looked at her sideways again and a strange expression came over his face.
“I can’t really explain it,” he said, “all I can say is that, when I saw you...I knew. I knew it was you. It was like I was being pulled towards you. Like…”
“...like you knew me all ready?” Dian asked.
“Yes,” Cat said.
Diana thought about telling Cat that she had felt that same thing. She had experienced that same, inexplicable tug towards him the first time she saw his picture on the front of that magazine. However when she even thought about the possibility of revealing that to him, she felt herself blush. Even after the kiss that they had shared, it still felt too intimate. She decided she wouldn’t dare and instead kept silent.
“Anyway,” Cat said after a moment’s silence, “we’ll know for sure either way when we get to the reservation.”
“That’s one hundred and fifty miles away,” Diana said. She had not brought a change of clothes or a charger for her phone or anything except her wallet and the clothes on her back. She certainly had not planned on traveling so far in such a small amount of time.
Then again, she had not planned on being attacked in her apartment, then at work, then being told that she had the blood of a deity running through her veins.
“I’m sorry you won’t have time to get your things,” Cat said, “We’ll have clothes for you at the reservation.”
“So there are people waiting for us?” Diana asked.
Cat let out a small cynical laugh.
“Oh,” he said, “there have been people waiting for you for a long, long time.”
Diana looked at him. She remembered the gentle eyes he had given her when he told her his secret, the kiss he had placed on her neck when he wrapped the necklace around her, and finally, the kiss in the breakroom and she realized she had one more burning question she had to ask.
“Have you been waiting for me?”
Cat looked at her. He wore the same expression he had had when he first met her. It was awe and reverence. As though he had never seen anything quite like her.
Finally, he gave her a gentle smile and said, “You have no idea how long I have waited for you.”
C
harlie did indeed meet them at the “Westward Crossing”, which turned out to be the Albuquerque city limit going west.
When Cat pulled the car over and Charlie slid into the back seat, he sported one black eye and his face had two long scars working down the right side.
“You should see the other guy,” he quipped wryly when Diana looked at him in shock.
“
Did
you see the other guy?” Cat asked turning back towards Charlie.
“Other girl you mean?” Charlie asked giving Diana another wink as she looked to him. “No I didn’t. She ran off as soon as you disappeared down the road.”
“Looks like she roughed you up pretty good beforehand,” Cat said, pulling once again out on to the open highway.
“I looked much worse right after, believe me,” Charlie said. “Amanda patched me up a bit and gave me a new shirt.”
He brought Diana’s attention to the green button down shirt that he now wore in place of his tight fitted blue one. Now that Diana looked at it closely, she could see that it was indeed, much larger on Charlie than the other had been.
“That’s mine,” Cat said. Diana was not surprised, “I’ll expect it back.”
“Relax,” Charlie said casually, putting both his feet up on the back seat, “it’s not like I’d want to keep one of your ugly ass shirts anyway.”
“Then at least get your ugly ass
feet
off my seat,” Cat quipped looking at Charlie lounging in the rearview mirror. Cat, though his words suggested irritation, wore an exasperated smile none the less.
“Dude,” Charlie said, “you know I can’t sleep if I’m not lying down.”
“Do you need to sleep?” Cat asked. “That black panther could be back with her friends at any moment.”
“Hey,” Charlie said, “I did just save your lives. Don’t you think I’m entitled to a nap?”
Cat rolled his eyes but the slight smile was still present.
“Fine,” he said. “Just take your shoes off.”
“Ok,” Charlie said sitting up and sliding his oxfords off his feet, “just remember, you asked for this.”
Diana did not know what he meant by that. It remained a mystery for about five minutes until a strange, ungodly smell filled her nostrils.
“What
is
that?” she asked.
Cat did not answer, merely rolled down a window.
“Sorry about that,” he said, “I always forget that his feet are even filthier than his shoes.”
“Should we wake him?” Diana asked. Even through her hand that still covered her nose, she could smell what had a definite rotten sewer odor wafting up from the back.
“No point,” Cat answered. “Once he starts snoring, Charlie can sleep through the coming apocalypse.”
As though on cue, Diana heard a loud snore rise up from the back seat. Cat smiled and shook his head.
“How long have you known him?” Diana asked.
“Well, that depends,” Cat said.
“On what?” Diana asked.
“Are you asking out of curiosity or are you wondering whether or not he’s trustworthy?”
“Can’t I be asking both questions at the same time?”
Cat was silent and seemed to consider that for a moment.
“If I recall correctly,” Diana pressed when she did not receive an answer, “you were the one who told me ‘don’t trust anyone’. And now, you’re asking me to trust an awful lot of people I’ve never met before.”
“Fair enough,” Cat said finally. “I’ve known Charlie most of my life. We grew up together.”
“On the reservation?” She asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “we lived next door to one another. We played together, went to school together, we even trained together. I trust him with my life.”
“Trained together?” Diana asked.
“You’ll see when we get there,” Cat responded.
Diana was too exhausted by that point to ask any more questions. Instead, she looked out the window and focused on the large canyons moving towards them in the distance.
“You know, I’ve always loved it out here,” Cat said, “the world seems...I don’t know...bigger somehow away from the cities.”
“Me too,” Diana said. “I remember taking trips to the four corner canyons with my parents when I was little. Everything was so big and bright. I could have stayed there for days and been completely happy.”
“I miss it,” Cat admitted.
“Why did you leave?” Diana asked. She had been to the Pueblo several times. And while the reservation itself was not most people’s idea of paradise, the land around it was so beautiful and rich, she knew if she had grown up in such a place, she would do everything she could to stay there.
“That’s a long story,” he said reluctantly, “the short version is, I got into a huge fight with my dad when I was eighteen. Went away to school and never went back.”
“But...you said you still had ties there,” Diana remembered, “you were allowed to do digs.”
“I’ve kept in touch with my Grandfather,” he said, “he’s still on the elected council. But I haven’t been back to the Pueblo in over twenty years.”
“Does it feel strange going back now?” Diana asked.
“I didn’t have time to think about it to be honest,” Cat answered. “You sort of came out of nowhere.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t intentional,” Diana answered wryly.
Cat looked over at her and smiled softly.
“You should get some rest,” he said gently, “it’ll be a while before we get there.”
Diana nodded, leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
It seemed to Diana that only a few minutes had passed before she awoke to the sound of raised and slightly panicky voices.
“We can’t go that way!” Charlie was saying, “I’m telling you it’s a trap!”
“Well, we can’t come in from the east either,” Cat answered him, “Amanda said, they’re waiting for us there.”
“They could have tricked her,” Charlie said.
“You know that’s not possible. If Amanda says they’re there, that’s where they are.”
Diana blinked wearily and looked out the window. The sun was moving low towards the canyons in front of them.
She knew those canyons. They were the ones near the Zuni Pueblo. They were almost there. She must have been asleep for at least an hour.
“Good morning,” Cat said smiling at her, “Well...afternoon, I should say. We’re going to have to take a little detour.”
“We don’t
have to,
Cat,” Charlie said, “I’m telling you. The pueblo’s just ahead. Even if they are waiting for us, we can take them. There won’t be that many.”
"Charlie," he said, "my leg is wounded, you're a mess and Diana can't do anything."
"That's not true," Diana said defensively, "you said yourself, I'm supposed to be an ultra-powerful...deity, aren't I?"
"Diana," Cat said, “all I said was you have her blood, what we call the Alpha blood inside you, but you haven't been trained yet. You can't do what we can."
“But…” Diana began.
“I’ve made the decision,” Cat said. With that he turned off the road leading towards the Pueblo to a smaller side street heading north.
“I’m telling you,” Charlie said, “we’re heading into a trap. Dude, you know this is Navajo territory.”
“And I’m telling
you,”
Cat said, “I trust my sister. If this is the way she tells us to go, this is the way we’re going.”
Diana looked in the rearview mirror and saw Charlie shake his head but he didn’t protest further.
Neither did Diana. Instead, she looked out the window at the desert brush that surrounded them and thought about what Cat had said.
‘Diana can’t do anything.’
She had put in a defense because she didn’t want it to be true. But the more she thought about it, the more she really considered her situation, the more she realized that Cat was right. She couldn’t do anything.
Not only could she not turn into a cougar the way Cat and Charlie could, she couldn’t even fight the smallest and weakest human possible, let alone a large animal.
She had taken a self-defense course once in college. To say that she was far behind the other women in the class was an understatement. The instructor had even had to get her special gloves to make up for her weak wrists.
The idea of taking on anyone or anything stronger than a plush pillow man was laughable to her.
Still, the idea of being completely helpless now, the idea of being entirely dependent on someone else, made her even more terrified.
Diana had always liked to be in control of things. That was why she had never experimented with drugs and rarely drank, even though her college peers had done both.
She simply did not enjoy the feeling that she had lost control of the world around her. Now the whole world it seemed, was spinning out of control and she could hardly stand the fact that there was nothing she could do to stop it.
They drove straight down one side street then turned down another then another. Each one seemed narrower and more dust filled than the last.
“It’ll take us another hour or so to go around this way,” Cat told her finally, “you might want to get some sleep.”
“Well, apparently I miss important tidbits when I fall asleep so, I’ll stay awake, thanks very much,” Diana quipped.
“You didn’t miss anything important,” Cat answered.
“Really, Cat?” Charlie chimed in from the back seat, “she’s a smart girl, you really think she’s not going to see through that lie?”
Diana looked in the rearview mirror and gave Charlie a grateful half smile. She couldn’t help but feel that, for some reason, Charlie gave her much more credit than Cat did. No matter what Cat had said about being drawn to her.
“Okay,” Cat said finally, “what do you want to know that you think you missed?”
“Who are these people who are supposed to be waiting for us on the road to the pueblo?” Diana asked.
“Even Amanda’s not sure,” Cat said.
“Exactly!” Charlie exclaimed from the back.
“But she knows they’re there. She also knows that they’re Navajo,” Cat added.
“You said she can’t be wrong,” Diana pressed, “how is that possible?”
“Because her charm is connected to mine too,” Cat said, “she can tell when I’m in danger even when I can’t.”
“So...it’s a sibling thing?” Diana asked.
“It’s a twin thing,” Charlie called from the back seat. Diana turned to look at him with wide eyes.
Charlie stared back at her confused for a moment before looking to Cat in the driver’s seat.
“You didn’t even tell her that?” Charlie asked, “Jesus, Cat. What have you told her?”
“I’ve told her what she needs to know,” Cat cut in throwing Charlie a warning glare in the rearview mirror.
"Really? Have you really told her everything?" Charlie called out skeptically.
“Charlie…” Cat growled threateningly.
“You can’t protect her from everything,” Charlie pressed on undeterred, “eventually, you’re going to have to tell her.”
Bam!
Diana gasped as she was suddenly jerked forward from what felt like a hit to the back bumper of the car.
She felt Charlie’s body hit against her back seat and she cried out in pain as he impacted her shoulder.
“What the fuck?!” Charlie called out.
“Are you ok?” Cat asked Diana. She reached over to her left shoulder and rubbed it gently. She winced realizing it was still extremely tender to the touch.
“I...I think so,” she said.
Cat looked back in the rear view mirror for the source of the impact.
“We’ve got company,” he said quickly before pressing down on the accelerator and speeding up considerably.
Diana wanted to turn around to see what sort of trouble Cat had seen in the rearview, but the moment she tried to look over her left shoulder, she gasped and nearly cried out as she tried to turn her head.
She gritted her teeth but Cat turned and looked at her with concern, none the less.
She knew that she should feel flattered that he was concerned for her. She should be thankful that someone was looking out for her in this strange new world.
But Diana had always been proud almost to a fault. She did not like having to be rescued. And she certainly didn’t like feeling helpless.
Bam!
She felt herself jerk forward once more. This time she did cry out as the strain in her shoulder stung her and she now felt a new twinge in her neck.
“You’ve got to speed up, Cat!” Charlie cried from the back, “he’s still right on top of us,”
“Get down, Diana,” Cat said as he pounded his foot on the gas and the Mercedes sped ahead at what felt like more than one hundred miles per hour.
Diana leaned down in her front seat cringing against the horrifying pain in both her shoulders.
“I don’t want to say I told you so…” Charlie called from the back.