Free WINDWALKER (THE PROPHECY SERIES) by Dinah McCall

a savior. He’d seen the men in his dreams – the men who would come after her. He’d seen fighting and blood and death, but they had not shown him the faces, so he didn’t know her true fate. And so he grieved for what was already lost, as well as what was yet to come.
    The Dineh knew she was gone. A few talked about hearing a motorcycle that morning, but no one had seen the rider. They already knew a crisis of world proportion was imminent before Layla even returned to the reservation. The council fires were burning; the elders warning what was imminent, and the younger people confused and afraid.
    The Dineh knew the history of their people and what had happened at the Bosque Redondo in 1864. The Navajo called it the Long Walk. The U.S. government called it relocating some Indians, and took the Dineh off their lands, forcing them to other land in New Mexico. It was often compared to the Trail of Tears the Cherokee endured when they the government took their lands in the East and sent them halfway across country to Oklahoma territory on foot.
    Many of the Navajo escaped the soldiers’ roundup by hiding in the canyons and the high mesas and continued living as they always had. But thousands were taken, and thousands had died. Only that was then, and this was now, and they couldn’t believe something that dire would happen again. The appearance of the Windwalker left families in turmoil, and a tribe divided by fear and the unknown.
    But the Navajo wasn’t the only tribe in crisis. It was happening all over North America, from the east coast to the west coast, from the southern border of the continent to the northern most boundaries. They’d all seen the video and the believers were waiting for another sign – the one that would tell them it was time to run.
     
    ****
     
    It was a sound, a breeze on her face, an instinct that something wasn’t right.
    Layla’s eyes flew open and saw a moving shadow on the floor in front of her, which meant someone was behind her. She rolled out of her bedroll onto her feet; her father’s hunting knife clutched tight in one hand.
    Niyol was holding two skinned rabbits already spitted and ready for the fire.
    “Most impressive,” he said. “I bring food.”
    Layla groaned, holstered the knife, and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.
    “I could have killed you,” she muttered.
    “You are not yet that good, but it is of no importance because I cannot die,” he said bluntly, then leaned the spitted rabbits against the stones, angling them toward the fire. “It will take a while for them to cook.”
    “I know that, and believe it or not, after a long night’s sleep and nearly scaring me half out of my mind, I need to pee.”
    He grinned as she strode past him. He had forgotten that humans were also funny.
     
    ****
     
    Two black SUVs drove onto the Navajo reservation just before sunrise with the location of George Begay’s house already set in the GPS.
    Emile Harper knew they were there because he’d sent them, but they were flying under radar, and technically had no backing or approval of the United States government. As for the men, it wasn’t their first rodeo. They considered any confrontation the locals might cause to be of no concern, and considered picking up one woman and taking her back to D.C. a simple task.
    They were driving eastward and topping a hill just as the sun breeched the horizon. For a fraction of a second the driver was blinded by the day’s first light, but his vision cleared just in time to slam on the brakes. The second car, which was driving in the dust trail of the first, barely missed rear-ending it.
    All of a sudden the walkie-talkie in the first car squawked. The driver in the second car was pissed.
    “What the fuck, Conroy? Over.”
    Conroy was still staring out his windshield as he picked up the radio. There were thousands and thousands of acres on the Navajo reservation, and a good three hundred armed men right in front of