Tricked

inched forward so that my toes and the pads of my feet rested on his right forearm. The bulk of my weight was still on my heels, but I could shift forward in an instant.
    » Don’t cut yourself on the sword, « I reminded him, though I was the one holding it at the moment.
    » I’ll remember, « Frank assured me.
    Grasping Moralltach firmly in my right hand, I looked up to the sky to spot the skinwalkers. The stars are so bright outside cities; it’s like those allergy commercials where they apply a blur filter and then wipe it away to imply that the entire world will be better if you swallow their pills. It is naturally clear like that inside the boundaries of the Navajo Nation—no drugs necessary. And so I spotted the skinwalker after only a few seconds’ search.
    His companion—or, rather, his brother—was there too, spiraling down onto our position on the south face of the southernmost defile of the Tyende Mesa, and once they had descended far enough, I asked Frank if he was ready.
    » Ready, « he affirmed.
    » Now, « I said, as I dropped Moralltach behind me and triggered the charm that would shift me to a great horned owl. My feet turned into talons and my arms into wings. Frank rose from his squat and lifted his arm over his head, effectively launching me skyward before the nearest skinwalker had time to register what was happening.
    Turkey vultures, for all their bulk, are not built for aerial combat. They are scavengers, built to eat dead meat quickly and contract few (if any) diseases from digesting said meat. They are constructed to glide for eons in search of immobile snack foods. So when they encounter a flying predator used to snatching extremely mobile prey like rabbits and mice, they are hopelessly outclassed—even if they have First World spirits juicing up their systems.
    I tangled with one of the vultures and it screeched in a combination of rage and astonishment, like a high school boy might when a teacher boldly confiscates his bag of Cheetos. It tore at me with its talons and pecked at me with its beak even as I tore at it—I felt bits of rib meat and my stomach being torn away—but I activated my healing charm and did my best to get hold of its neck with my talons. It thrashed desperately; its wingspan was as great as mine, if not greater, and we began to fall, since neither of us could beat the air sufficiently when we were beating each other. But I managed to roll around to the top and lock on to its neck with one taloned foot and yank upward, and this had a singular, unexpected effect on the creature. The vulture skin made a sucking, popping sound and the human fell from underneath it, screaming, to fall headfirst and splatter wetly on the mesa strewn with poisoned nails.
    It did not immediately move afterward and pretend that nothing had happened. It did not, in fact, move at all. Victory! I thought, since the vulture skin was still in my talons. I let it drop harmlessly onto Tyende Mesa. But the other skinwalker saw his brother broken on the ground and cried out, abandoning subterfuge and diving straight for Frank, perceiving him to be the softer target.
    They didn’t have unnatural speed, I saw, in the air: They could move only as fast as the air would allow the physiognomy of their forms. As bobcats they could take advantage of unnatural musculature. As vultures they could rely on aerodynamics only—their stronger shoulders would allow them to flap more than vultures normally do, perhaps, but it wouldn’t allow them to fly at peregrine-falcon speeds.
    The hataa³ii saw the skinwalker coming and thrust Moralltach high above his head to make landing difficult. I tacked about and adjusted my course before diving after it. Owls dive faster than vultures; they are designed to do so. I hit him at an angle from above, talons first, and bore him to the ground, barely missing the blade of Moralltach. The creature shrieked and began to bubble and buck bizarrely underneath my grasp. It was more than I could hold on to as an owl, so I shifted directly to a wolfhound and quickly moved to lock my jaws on the back of its neck. As I did so, it shifted as well, from a vulture to a human with the vulture skin and feathers lying on top, but it seemed involuntary. My cold-iron aura, I realized, was causing the transformation to the natural human form; that was why the first one had fallen out of his skin once I’d clutched him in my talons and why the skin of the bobcat had rippled as it