Turn Coat by Jim Butcher Page A

have sensed me when the tracks passed through its territory.”
    “Why would it do that?”
    “Follow an injured wizard?” he asked. “Because they get stronger by devouring the essence of practitioners. I was an easy meal.”
    “It eats magic?”
    Morgan nodded. “Adds its victims’ power to its own.”
    “So what you’re telling me is that not only did the skinwalker get away, but now it’s stronger for having killed Kirby.”
    He shrugged. “I doubt the werewolf represented much gain, relative to what it already possessed. Your talents, or mine, are orders of magnitude greater.”
    I took up a rubber hose and bound it around Morgan’s upper arm. I waited for the veins just below the bend of his elbow to pop up. “Seems like an awfully unlikely chance encounter.”
    Morgan shook his head. “Skinwalkers can only dwell on tribal lands in the American Southwest. It wasn’t as if whoever is framing me would know that I was going to escape and flee to Tucson.”
    “Point,” I said, slipping the needle into his arm. “Who would wanna go there in the summer, anyway?” I thought about it. “The skinwalker’s got to go back to his home territory, though?”
    Morgan nodded. “The longer he’s away, the more power it costs him.”
    “How long can he stay here?” I asked.
    He winced as I missed the vein and had to try again. “More than long enough.”
    “How do we kill it?” I frowned as I missed the vein again.
    “Give me that,” Morgan muttered. He took the needle and inserted it himself, smoothly, and got it on the first try.
    I guess you learn a few things over a dozen decades.
    “We probably don’t,” he said. “The true skinwalkers, the naagloshii, are millennia old. Tangling with them is a fool’s game. We avoid it.”
    I taped down the needle and hooked up the catheter. “Pretend for a minute that it isn’t going to cooperate with that plan.”
    Morgan grunted and scratched at his chin with his other hand. “There are some native magics that can cripple or destroy it. A true shaman of the blood could perform an enemy ghost way and drive it out. Without those our only recourse is to hit it with a lot of raw power—and it isn’t likely to stand still and cooperate with that plan, either.”
    “It’s a tough target,” I admitted. “It knows magic, and how to defend against it.”
    “Yes,” Morgan said. He watched me pick a preloaded syringe of antibiotics from the cooler. “And its abilities are more than the equal of both of us put together.”
    “Jinkies,” I said. I primed the syringe and pushed the antibiotics into the IV line. Then I got the codeine and a cup of water, offering Morgan both. He downed the pills, laid his head back wearily, and closed his eyes.
    “I Saw one once, too,” he said.
    I started cleaning up. I didn’t say anything.
    “They aren’t invulnerable. They can be killed.”
    I tossed wrappers into the trash can and restored equipment to the medical kit. I grimaced at the bloodied rug that still lay beneath Morgan. I’d have to get that out from under him soon. I turned to leave, but stopped in the doorway.
    “How’d you do it?” I asked, without looking behind me.
    It took him a moment to answer. I thought he’d passed out again.
    “It was the fifties,” he said. “Started in New Mexico. It followed me to Nevada. I lured it onto a government testing site, and stepped across into the Nevernever just before the bomb went off.”
    I blinked and looked over my shoulder at him. “You nuked it?”
    He opened one eye and smiled.
    It was sort of creepy.
    “Stars and stones . . . that’s . . .” I had to call a spade a spade. “Kind of cool.”
    “Gets me to sleep at night,” he mumbled. He closed his eye again, sighed, and let his head sag a little to one side.
    I watched over his sleep for a moment, and then closed the door.
    I was pretty tired, myself. But like the man said:
    “I have promises to keep,” I sighed to myself.

    I got on the