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e pulled away. “It was because of me that she died. Because of what I do. I didn’t protect her. They came, they took her, and they ... infected her.”
“Who’s they?”
“The Anada’duntaski. The cannibals.”
“Cannibals came and took your wife? And they infected her with what? Cannibalitis? You aren’t making any sense.”
“ ‘Anada’duntaski’ translates to ‘cannibals,’ but what they are is—” He broke off and bit his lip as if he suddenly didn’t want to tell me.
“You’ve gone this far. You think after what I’ve seen in this town I’m not going to believe you?”
He let his lip go, and a tiny spot of blood bloomed where his teeth had torn the skin. My chest hurt at the pain I saw on his face. He reached for my hand, and I met his halfway.
“What are the Anada’duntaski?”
His eyes met mine. “Vampires.”
“Cherokee vampires?”
“Every culture has their own version of the vampire and the werewolf myth.”
“There’s a Cherokee werewolf?”
“In a way. When I was a boy, the old men told me of the war medicine. The ability of certain warriors to change their shape, becoming any animal they wished to triumph over their enemies. Many chose a wolf because he was brave and loyal and fierce.”
I’d heard about that, too. “And the vampire?”
He glanced down, though he continued to hold my hand. “The Anada’duntaski were called the roasters because they supposedly cooked the flesh of their enemies and ate it.”
“Which makes them cannibal and not vampire.” Not that either one was all that appealing.
“They began as men who did just that—killed their enemy and ate him. They were the most feared of warriors, even before they discovered that drinking the blood of the living made them live, too. Forever.”
Okay, that was a vampire.
“The Anada’duntaski are day walkers,” he continued. “The sun doesn’t hurt them. They live like any other man, except they must hunt the night. They drink the blood of the innocent, and they multiply.”
“How do you kill them?”
“Cut off their heads.”
He said it so calmly I got a chill. “You’d better be sure you’ve got the right man before you try that.”
Ian’s smile was completely without humor. When he smiled like that he no longer seemed like a healer, but a Nighthawk Keetoowah, scourge of supernatural creatures everywhere.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was the first time I’d gone after an Anada’duntaski. I was young, foolish, flush with my own power, the secrets I knew that no one else did. I thought I was invincible. I found them; I killed them. But one of them got away, and he made my wife like him.”
Which explained why Ian insisted he was no longer married. Undead was as good as a divorce.
“She became a spy,” he continued. “Because of her, because of me, we lost a dozen Nighthawks in the next six months.”
“That must have been horrible.”
His haunted gaze met mine. “ ‘Horrible’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”
“Do you want to describe it? Would you feel better if you talked about it?”
