Page 28 of Close By (Kari Blackhorse #1)

The skin never fit right on nights like this.

Dr. Elaine Redford felt it stretching, thinning in places, as if her body was attempting to push through its own boundaries.

Her reflection in the rearview mirror showed the same familiar face—silver-framed glasses, shoulder-length gray hair neatly styled, the appearance of a respected academic.

But beneath that carefully maintained exterior, something else watched through her eyes.

Something hungry.

The headlights of her car sliced through darkness that seemed somehow thicker than usual, more substantial.

She repeatedly checked the rearview mirror—not from suspicion but from habit.

The woman who taught meticulous research methodology to graduate students applied the same carefulness to everything, especially on nights like this.

The moon hung low over the mesas, its silvery light casting the landscape in ghostly relief. Three-quarter moon. Not full, not new, but waxing—growing stronger. Like the presence inside her.

Redford’s academic mind could explain exactly what was happening to her.

Psychosis exacerbated by stress. Delusions with a cultural fixation, manifesting as dissociative episodes during which she experienced an alternate identity.

Her rational self—the Dr. Redford who published papers on Navajo ceremonial practices, who lectured on the anthropological significance of indigenous rituals—understood the psychological terminology perfectly.

That self, however, was growing quieter by the minute.

She turned off the main highway onto a dirt road, her modest sedan bouncing over the uneven terrain. On the seat beside her, wrapped in soft cloth, lay her most precious possession: a small book bound in what looked like ancient leather, its brittle pages covered in cramped handwriting.

Professor Anton Wilheim’s field notes, 1923–1927. Unpublished. Uncatalogued. Removed from the university archives before they could be properly processed after his estate donated them.

The book had been her starting point, the key that unlocked the door to understanding what was happening to her.

Wilheim had documented what he called “transformation ceremonies” among cultures worldwide—rituals through which individuals believed they could assume the attributes of animals or spirits.

His notes on Navajo Skinwalker practices were particularly detailed, filled with fragments of ceremonies he’d observed partially or heard described by reluctant informants.

Dangerous knowledge, incomplete but potent. Knowledge that had crystallized the formless dread she’d carried since childhood into something named and directed.

Redford had first felt the presence three years ago, shortly after her divorce—a shadow at the edge of her consciousness, a hunger that didn’t feel like her own.

At first, she’d dismissed it as depression, sought therapy, taken the prescribed medications.

But the presence had grown stronger, more distinct, until she could feel it moving beneath her skin on certain nights when the boundary between worlds thinned.

The Skinwalker. The yee naaldlooshii. Inside her, somehow, using her. Or perhaps—as she had come to believe after finding Wilheim’s notes— she was becoming it . Transforming against her will.

That’s when she started to search for a cure.

Redford’s car jolted over a particularly rough section of road, jarring her from her thoughts.

She slowed, checking the small GPS unit suction-cupped to her windshield.

The marker indicating her destination pulsed steadily—another sacred site, one documented in Wilheim’s notes as a “doorway.” A place where the boundary was naturally thin, where transformation could be reversed if the proper ceremony was performed.

If sufficient power was gathered to force the Skinwalker out.

Containment and transfer—an effort to force the Skinwalker out of her and into a more suitable vessel, or to destroy it entirely through the proper ritual. One way or another, she would free herself.

She parked in a small turnout, concealing her car behind a stand of juniper trees.

The night air swept against her as she stepped out—cool, dry, scented with creosote and dust. She shouldered the duffel bag, her slight frame belying the strength that surged through her muscles on these nights.

Another symptom of her condition—adrenaline flooding her system as the transformation progressed, granting her capabilities that her daytime self lacked.

Dr. Elaine Redford would never have been able to overpower Mark Harrington, to snap his neck with one savage twist. But the creature she became on these nights was something else entirely.

The path to the sacred site wasn’t marked on any tourist map.

It wound through scrub and stone, visible only to those who knew what to look for—subtle signs left by those who had come before, generations of footsteps wearing almost imperceptible patterns into the ancient earth.

Redford followed these signs with the confidence of someone who had studied them extensively, her movements growing more fluid with each step, less human somehow.

Inside her mind, Dr. Redford was becoming a smaller voice, an observer trapped behind her own eyes as the other self took control.

This is the fourth ceremony, she thought with the part of her mind that remained analytical. Harrington was the first attempt—sloppy, incomplete. Delgado, the second—better, but still flawed.

Mitchell had been unexpected, an opportunity too perfect to ignore. When she’d overheard him in the faculty lounge, boasting to a junior colleague about his plans to “finally document that burial site properly,” she’d known immediately that he would be next. That the Skinwalker would claim him.

That perhaps his death would be enough to complete the reversal ceremony.

But it hadn’t been. After Mitchell, the presence had retreated briefly, satisfied, only to return stronger than before. Now it hungered again, driving her toward this place, this night.

The detective’s visit had been a complication—and unexpectedly, a gift.

When Blackhorse showed her the crime scene photos, pointing out the ceremonial errors, Redford struggled to maintain her professional composure.

Not from horror at the images, but from realization of her mistakes.

The placement was wrong. The directional alignment was incorrect. No wonder the ceremonies hadn’t worked.

Thanks to Detective Blackhorse, she had corrected those mistakes.

As she neared the sacred site, Redford slowed, her movements becoming predatory.

The transformation was progressing faster tonight.

She could feel her senses sharpening—smells more intense, sounds clearer, vision adapting to darkness with unnatural speed.

The contents of Wilheim’s notes suggested this acceleration was a sign that the boundary between her human self and the Skinwalker was thinning.

Soon, one would consume the other entirely. The question was which.

She crested a small rise and paused, surveying the site below.

It was a natural amphitheater of sorts, ringed by weathered stone formations that resembled seated figures in the moon’s deceptive light.

At its center stood a singular rock spire, splitting at the top into what looked like grasping fingers.

Another “monster’s hand,” smaller than the one where Harrington had died, but similar in form.

And beside it, illuminated by the bobbing beam of a flashlight, was a figure wearing a hooded sweatshirt, kneeling beside an open backpack.

Redford smiled coldly. Right on schedule.

She had overheard him in the student center three days ago—a self-styled artist named Jared Wilson, bragging to his friends about his plans to “tag” sacred sites across the reservation.

“The ultimate canvas,” he’d called it, laughing as he described how he would mark ancient stone with his signature style.

She’d been evaluating student papers at a corner table, unnoticed by the group of undergraduates.

They hadn’t seen the tremor in her hands as the presence inside her stirred at their words, awakening to the opportunity.

They couldn’t know how she’d followed Wilson for two days, learning his patterns, discovering his list of targeted sites in an unguarded notebook.

Preparing for tonight.

The Skinwalker had shown her which site he would visit first—this one, with its hand-like formation reaching toward the sky. The perfect place for the fourth ceremony. The one that would finally work.

She set down the duffel bag and removed the ceremonial knife, its blade catching moonlight. The mask came next, fitting over her face like a second skin. The herbs she arranged quickly in her pocket, ready for the ceremony that would follow.

That would finally cure her.

From her throat came a sound no human vocal cords should produce—a low, guttural call that froze the young vandal in place. He turned slowly, spray can still in hand, his face a mask of sudden terror as he saw what approached from the darkness.

Not Dr. Elaine Redford, respected anthropologist and academic. Not a small woman in her fifties with silver-framed glasses and sensible shoes.

But something that moved like shadow given form, knife in hand, mask transforming her face into something ancient and hungry, eyes reflecting moonlight like a predator’s.

The Skinwalker smiled beneath its mask, muscles coiling for the attack, adrenaline surging like fire through its veins.

One more ceremony. One more death. And then, perhaps, freedom.