Shadow of Time - Book 1: (Paranormal Romance) (15 page)

When Josh finally let go of her a little bit, he kept holding h
er, his face close to hers. Unwillingly, she opened her eyes and saw his up close.

“I could kiss you all day long,” he whispered. He touched her cheek, his breath slowing down. “
But I’m scared. Scared I’ll have to talk when I stop kissing you.” He closed his eyes. “Scared I’ll have to explain to you why I’m so distant sometimes.”

“Then don’t,” Hannah replied. “Don’t stop. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

Josh gave her such a sweet smile she felt butterflies flitting around in her stomach. He bent over and kissed her lightly on her cheeks, her forehead, her closed eyelids.

“I’ve never f
elt this connected to anyone, you know that?” she whispered breathlessly into his ear.

His arm slid around her waist. “I haven’t felt
like this for a very long time,” he confessed in a husky voice, and for some reason, it didn’t sound strange. It felt like Josh had waited all these years for her to come back to the reservation.

He
gazed into her eyes. “
Ayor anosh’ni
,” he mumbled, almost inaudibly.

Hannah closed her eyes and savo
red his words. He had always loved her, but now it was different. Now it was so much more.

And
then, a wave of dizziness crashed over her out of nowhere, like someone had smacked her on the head. In a flash, she saw Josh’s older face – the face from her dreams. The Josh who tried to save her night after night, whispering that he loved her in Diné Bizaad.

With a start, she opened her eyes. The vision had been so life-like. She stared at Josh,
shivering when he stared back at her with the same amount of shock in his eyes. He stepped backwards, letting go of her hands.

“Josh,” she stammered, confused. “What’s the
matter?”

He bit his lip
, a look of muted sadness in his eyes. “Nothing.” He stroked the back of her hand, sighing deeply. “Give me time.”

“Okay,” Hannah
agreed, even though his sudden mood change confused her. No matter how strangely he behaved, he was worth having patience for.

Suddenly, the
approached sound of Ben’s Chevy disrupted their embrace. Hannah shot a glance out the window.

“Ben’
s back,” she said.

“Yeah.” Josh cleared his throat. “I didn’t come to see
him
.”

She blushed. “Oh.”

He smiled and turned a bit red himself, slowly letting go of her.

“So,
you want to sneak out before he comes in?” Hannah giggled nervously.

Josh chuckle
d in response. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll stay.”

When Ben and Nick
entered the kitchen, Hannah was sitting at the dinner table and Josh was leaning against the counter, sipping from the cup of coffee she’d left there.

“Hey!” Ben
arched his eyebrows. “What are you doing here?”

“
We were meeting up here, right?” Josh asked, trying his best to sound clueless.

“Uhm,
no
. We were supposed to meet up in Naabi’aani. Which seems the logical course of action. To me, at least.”

“Aren’t we
picking up stuff at Yazzie’s?”

“Nick and I offered to do that.” Ben grinned. “Idiot.”

“Oh, well,” Josh shrugged. “I’ll join you guys then, since I’m here anyway.”

“Are we leaving now?” Nick asked.

“Yazzie won’t have our gear ready before eleven,” Ben said with a glance at the clock. “Let’s have a drink and run through the list to see if we have everything.” He turned to Hannah. “You going to the beach?”

“Yeah
, in a minute. I want to make some sandwiches before I leave.”

She got up and wa
lked to the counter, reaching out for the jar of peanut butter behind Josh. Her arm touched his, and a pleasant tingling sensation shot through her body. She looked sideways. Josh returned her private stare, smiling slightly. Blushing, she looked away again. He really had the power to set her on fire – too bad he was leaving for that hike today.

When
Hannah stepped outside and passed Ben on the porch, he stopped her. “What was that look you shared with Josh in the kitchen?” he inquired, eyeing her with a playful smile.

“What look?” s
he said innocently.

Ben
tilted his head. “How long had he been here when I came back?”

“Long enough,” Hannah replied with flushed cheeks. She couldn’t help grinning when Ben took her hand and squeezed it.

“Great,” he beamed. “I’m happy for you. Not to mention off the hook. This means I don’t have to pull off a full-blown ‘hit-on-my-sister-you-slowpoke’ propaganda program anymore.”

Hannah burst out laughing. “
You were gonna do that? How sweet.”

“Of course, si
s.” He eyed her seriously. “Feel better, okay? Promise me you’ll talk to Em and the police.”

“Yeah, will do.” She was looking forward to
meeting Emily – she’d have something to tell her besides sinister stalking stories.

After
Josh, Ben and Nick had left for Wahweap at a quarter to eleven, Hannah locked up the cabin and walked down to the beach, humming a tune to herself. Her problems hadn’t disappeared completely, but this morning had definitely cheered her up – a lot.

11.

That afternoon,
the Greenes’ car pulled around the bend just as Hannah returned from the beach. Paul honked and waved at her as he parked. A few seconds later, the entire family spilled out of the car, looking sun-tanned and upbeat. Except Ivy, Hannah noticed as she veered off to say hi to her neighbors. The eldest girl looked sick.

“How was Monument Valley?” Hannah
inquired.

“
Amazing,” Ivy replied. “But way too hot for me. I have a splitting headache. Amber thinks I’ve got heatstroke.”

“Will you join us for dinner tonight, Hannah?” Sarah said warmly. “Amb
er invited Emily too, so it’d be sad if you were sitting all by yourself one door down.”

In the meantime, Ivy staggered inside to lie down. Paul and Sarah got back
in the car to get some groceries in Page, and Amber walked with Hannah to the other cabin so they could chat without keeping Ivy awake.

Amber’s eye was caught by Yazzie’s motorcycle
on the drive. “Hey, who left the bike here?”

“Josh did.” Hannah couldn’t help blushing a bit. “He was here this morning.”

Amber’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Why the flustered look?”

“Well. He came here to talk. To me.”

“Uh-huh,” Amber pushed. “So?”

“So, he wanted to apologize for being so weird around me lately.”

“And? Did he succeed?”

“Yeah, he did. I couldn’t be angry anymore when he kissed me.”

Amber’s face split into a grin so wide it almost didn’t fit on her face. “Oh my God! That’s
awesome
, I’m so excited for you!”

“
I know, right? I’m so happy. But, I’m also still confused. All those weird dreams I’m having about him – and I know he shuts people out, but I don’t know why.”

“Well, you
have all summer to figure him out. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“
His behavior is not what worries me most. It’s my nightmares.”

“They’ve become worse?”

Hannah fell silent. The last time she’d told Amber about her dreams, she’d only seen Josh and the primitive village under attack. In the meantime, the terrifying vision of the snowy landscape and the shapeshifters at Rainbow Bridge had come into the equation. Amber didn’t know about those things yet – only Emily and Nick had heard that story.

“I can’t even sleep without taking pills anymore,” she
mumbled. “At least when I take a sleeping pill, I sleep so deeply I don’t dream. Or at least, I don’t remember it. Without them, I have such horrible nightmares that I shout bloody murder in my sleep. Ben woke me this morning because I was screaming and crying.”

Amber shot h
er a perplexed look. “No way. So what do you dream about?”

Hannah shivered despite the heat. “I can’t really explain. There’s always
an onmipresent feeling of danger. Soldiers are attacking the village, murdering people. But my last few nightmares featured these sinister apparitions looking like shadows. There’s always three of them. They stare at me, or ... ” She took a deep breath. “Or they change into some kind of monsters.”

Amber
shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound like a normal response to being harassed by a bunch of drunks. It’s almost like – like you’re bewitched or something. You saw something scary when you went to Rainbow Bridge with us too, right? Some kind of vision? Emily mentioned witches when I talked to her about people without auras. Plus, some years ago I read a lot of stuff about voodoo and witchcraft where people cast a spell on you or jinx you. Something like that might be happening to you.”

“What else did Emily say?”

“I don’t remember exactly. She’ll be here any minute. Maybe we should wait for her.”

Hannah suddenly smiled, giving Amber a cheeky
look. “Yeah, I heard you invited Emily for dinner. So what’s the deal between you two?”

Amber’s face turned as red as her hair. “We have this thing,” she said shyly.

Grinning widely, Hannah got up to get a bottle of soda from the kitchen. She was just pouring drinks for Amber and herself when she heard Emily’s old Beetle outside, coming up the road and screeching to a stop next to the cabin with a cracking exhaust pipe.

“Hi!” she called out cheerfully,
stepping onto the porch. She hugged Hannah, quickly kissed Amber on the lips, then sat down. “How’s your day been, girls?”

“Good. I just got back from Monument Valley. It was fantastic,” Amber said.

“And yours?” Emily turned to Hannah.

“Can’t complain. I kissed Josh.”

“Really?!” Emily’s voice shot up two octaves. “When?”

Hannah spun the story of how Josh had visited her in the cabin that
morning. Emily smiled, but a hint of doubt still lingered on her face. That was no surprise – after all, her friend had warned her about Josh’s inexplicable mood swings, and in all fairness, she was right.

“So let’s talk about your dreams and visions.” Emily dug up a notepad and pencil from her bag. “When
did they start?”

“I was harassed by the lake on Thursday night. Ben and Josh picked me up because I ran out of fuel. That night, I had my first nightmare.”

“What did you dream about?”

“About a traditional village.” Hannah closed her eyes to recall the images. “A Navajo village. With primitive hoghans, the kind with dried-up clay on the outside. People were wearing old-fashioned clothes, and the village was attacked by Mexicans.”

“How do you know they were Mexicans?”

“Did they wear sombreros?” Amber inquired.

Hannah couldn’t help stifling a nervous laugh.
“Not the big ones. They wore some kind of smaller hats, uniforms, and they spoke Spanish. In my dream, they clearly sounded Mexican. After that first nightmare, I dreamed about the attack several more times, and it’s always the same people burning down the village.”

“So, what are they doing exactly?” Emily continued.

“Like I said, the village is burning. I think they set it on fire. In my dream, I’m running from the soldiers, looking for someone who I know can protect me.”

“And that person is...?” Emily scribbled down a few notes and
then looked up at Hannah expectantly.

“Josh,” Hannah confessed with red cheeks.
“But he looks different. Older. He’s also wearing traditional clothes, and his hair is up in a bun like last Saturday at the rodeo. He seems about thirty years old.”

“Is he your lover in that part of the dream
?” Emily asked.

Hannah hesitated.
She suddenly realized something new. “No. No, he isn’t. I can feel he’s really important to me, but he is not my husband. Not anymore.” She fell silent. That was an interesting discovery.

Emily pondered over the things she’d written down. “So, does
he save you in the end?”

“I have no idea. I’m hiding from those Mexicans, and Josh sees me, but he looks away on purpose so he won’t alert the Mexicans to my presence. After that, I make a sort of leap in time, and the next thing I see is the hilltop where I leave him.”

“Tell me more.” Emily picked up her pencil again.

“
We are near a precipice looking out over Canyon de Chelly – I think. He tells me a story in Diné Bizaad, looking solemn. I get up and walk away from him, because I feel an overwhelming urge to be free. It feels like – like breaking up.”

Amber and Emily
stared at her nonplussed. “That’s quite a saga,” Emily mumbled. “And that eerie feeling? Was it there the first time you had a strange dream?”

Hannah shook
her head. “No, not like that. The third time I was having the same dream, there were three shadows waiting for me at the foot of that hill where I’m leaving Josh behind. The same three apparitions I saw in the vision at Rainbow Bridge.”

Emily nodded slowly. “You said one of them turned into an animal?”

“A coyote. And those sinister apparitions haven’t left since. They keep invading my dreams. Last night, I dreamed I was looking out over Canyon de Chelly, facing the wind. The three creatures were approaching me, their faces distorted, looking like coyotes with bared fangs. Then, all of a sudden, there were bugs crawling all over my body. In the dream, it felt like I was about to jump into the abyss and commit suicide so I could finally have peace.”

Talking about her nightmares was useful for linking up dream events, but it also made her relive
all the terror she’d felt. Hannah shuddered.

Amber tapped
her shoulder. “You think those aura-less men have something to do with your dreams?” she asked gingerly.

Hanna
h nodded defeatedly. “Yeah. It’s like my dreams blend in with reality. Those three entities are after me in
real
life. Not just in my dreams.”

Emily put her hand on Amber
’s arm. “You saw something strange? Is that why you wanted to know about people without auras?”

“When I ran into Hannah in the supermarket on Saturday, I told her I
can see auras. In turn, she told me about her weird dreams and her feelings of paranoia.”

“I
bumped into these three men in Safeway who creeped me out big time,” Hannah explained. “I just didn’t know why. I mean, two of them were talking in the aisle next to me and they had the exact same voices as the drunk guys who harassed me, but they looked nothing like them. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling something didn’t quite add up.”

“So Hannah asked me to walk back to Safeway with her and have a look at those men,” Amber added.

“And you saw something weird,” Emily concluded.

“You bet I did. Those three had
no
auras. Nothing, nada, zip.”

Emily fell silent for a long time, mindlessly doodling underneath
her notes. When the silence became too oppressive for her, Hannah cleared her throat. “So, your thoughts?”

“Have you felt threatened by other people
besides those men at the supermarket lately?” Emily asked without looking up. Her voice was so serious it scared Hannah.

“Well –
not people. Coyotes. Three of them, near the cabin on Saturday, just before we went to the rez,” she mumbled. And then she remembered the twins and their dad at the parking lot, waiting for her to leave, staring her down like they were about to murder her. She swallowed. “Actually, I have. Groups of three. I just thought it was in my mind. I thought I was going nuts.”

“If I’m right about this, that’
s exactly what they want you to believe.” Emily grabbed her hand. “Please listen to me. You’re not crazy.”

Hannah nodded
curtly. “Okay. So what the heck is going on?”

“I think you’ve become the target of somet
hing I don’t even want to say out loud,” Emily whispered.

T
he hairs on Hannah’s arms prickled. Emily had such a grim look on her face she almost felt like running, just so she wouldn’t have to listen to whatever came next.

“
Yenaldlooshi,
” Emily spoke, almost inaudibly. “Skinwalkers.”

They were all completely silent for a moment.

“What’s that?” Amber whispered.

“The
y’re witches or warlocks –
chindi
. They never work alone, but in threes. The Diné don’t speak their name aloud, because it invokes them or attracts misfortune. Skinwalkers use black magic to change into coyotes so they can harass and terrorize people. If powerful enough, they can also change into other beings or copy other people’s appearances. Often, they will use their mental power to drive you insane. They influence your thoughts to make you believe you’re crazy, or to make you harm or kill yourself. It’s the nastiest form of
ánt’iihnii
– witchcraft.”

Hannah couldn’t help
giving Emily a completely stumped look. Despite the heat, she suddenly felt cold as ice. Things like these didn’t exist. Right? At least, not in
her
world. On the other hand – Emily’s story was beyond bizarre, but at least it accounted for what she felt. So she wasn’t crazy – she was cursed. Under a spell. Chased by supernatural beings.

“I know it sounds impossible,” Emily went on, a
n insecure quiver in her voice.

Hannah swallowed.
“No. I believe you. I really do. But you know, stuff like this doesn’t happen in my life. I have such a different background from yours – no yarns about magic and mystery told by ancestors. My mother never even bothered to pretend Santa existed.”

“Do you think
the dreams are all caused by some sort of curse?” Amber wanted to know.

“I’m sure of it,” Emily replied. “You started having the dreams when
you first met the three warlocks. Skinwalkers can use their powers to read people’s minds, to break into their thoughts.”

Hannah shivered, thinking back to the moment she’d heard a coyote howl near Rainbow Bridge. Maybe Josh had felt something was wr
ong with her. Was that why he’d looked so scared?