Chee kept his hands on his pistols as the woman advanced toward them. He knew it was her, without question, could sense it without having ever seen her face. She was the one who had followed them, had come to the warehouse in Denver, for reasons he didn’t know. And he was fairly certain she was a Deathwalker. The cloak, hiding her face from the sun and light-all of it pointed to her being one of Van Helsing’s vampires.
“What the hell just happened?” Hollister whispered to him.
Chee didn’t answer, never took his eyes off the woman, who sat on the great stallion as still as a statue. He was tense, instinct telling him to pull his guns and shoot her down, but he remained calm, waiting to see what the major wanted to do.
“Can I help you?” Hollister said to the woman.
“Sir, I don’t think we…” Chee started to say, but the major held up his hand, silencing him.
Don’t do this, Chee thought. Don’t bring her into your circle, Major. She is death. He was more certain of this than he’d ever been of anything in his life. The woman on horseback before them was death.
“I say, can I help you?” Hollister repeated. The woman on the horse said nothing. A few paces behind him he heard the squeak of Chee’s holster as the young man gripped his pistols so tightly Hollister thought he might shatter them. The sergeant was tensed and anxious, ready to fight.
“Easy, Chee, let’s see what she has to say,” he said quietly, “and see if you can steady your friend there.” Dog was still on alert, ready to pounce on the woman.
“Major, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Chee said.
Hollister turned away from the woman to study the young soldier.
“Maybe not. But she just chased off forty Ute warriors without a weapon. I have a feeling if she wanted us dead, we’d be dead already.” When he gazed again at the woman, she removed her hood, revealing her face.
With his first clear look at her, Hollister felt her beauty strike him like a punch in the gut. She was beyond gorgeous, her blond hair hanging below her shoulders and green eyes peering out at him from a face carved from alabaster. Her clothing hid most of her figure, but even as she sat in the saddle he could tell she was tall for a woman, her knee-high boots and leather riding pants covering long legs.
Jonas suddenly realized how long it had been since he’d really stopped and looked at a woman. Even after four years locked away in Leavenworth, most of his thoughts had gone only to getting out. And in the past few days, events had moved so quickly, there hadn’t been much time to think about anything else. At West Point, and after the war, he had courted women as an eligible bachelor, but he’d never met anyone who really made him think about marriage or a life beyond the army. Now he stood twenty yards away from what he thought might clearly be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and for a moment it was difficult to speak.
“Who are you?” he finally asked.
The woman stared at him. Her face was a curious mixture of fear and anxiety. It looked to him like she was wrestling with something: a problem so big the weight of it might crush her. It made Hollister want to help her. Take off his hat and hold it in his hands and ask her, like a Knight Errant might ask his queen how he could be of service.
She stared hard at him for several seconds.
“I am called Shaniah,” she said. Her voice was low and Hollister and Chee had to strain to hear her.
“What are you doing here?” Hollister asked.
She did not answer but pulled the cloak back over her head and reined the stallion around, giving him the quirt as she rode hard back the way she had come. Vanishing into the trees almost as mysteriously as she had arrived.
Hollister looked at Chee, who still seemed ready to jump on his horse and ride the woman down.
“Huh,” he said.