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The statement seemed to break through, just briefly.Redford straightened, a flicker of her normal self visible in her posture.“Treatment?”She laughed, the sound brittle and wrong.“I’ve had treatment.Therapists, medications, hospitalizations.Nothing helps what’s inside me.”

She took a step forward, and Kari adjusted her stance, finger hovering near her trigger.“Stay where you are, Dr.Redford.”

“Butyouunderstand, don’t you?”Redford continued as if Kari hadn’t spoken.“About what happens when the boundary thins, when the Skinwalker finds its way in.”

The calm certainty in her voice was more chilling than her earlier feral behavior.This wasn’t just psychosis—it was a coherent delusion, a complete alternative reality in which Redford’s actions made perfect sense.

“The boy wasn’t quite right,” Redford said, sounding disappointed.“Too young, too ignorant.Just desecration without understanding.But you—” Her eyes fixed on Kari with renewed intensity.“You’re perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”Kari asked, buying time, knowing backup was still minutes away.

“The final transformation.The cure.”Redford’s posture changed again, becoming more hunched and more animal-like.“Diné blood with a modern mind.The perfect vessel for transfer.I can be free, and you’ll know how to contain it.”

She moved suddenly, with speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a woman her age and size.Kari fired, the shot missing as Redford ducked with unnatural quickness.The knife flashed in the moonlight as Redford closed the distance.

Kari shifted to defensive tactics, her police training taking over.She blocked Redford’s first slash, then struck out with her flashlight, connecting solidly with the professor’s shoulder.The blow would have staggered most attackers, but Redford barely seemed to notice as she pivoted to attack again.

Each movement drove Kari further toward the ravine’s edge, a fact she registered with growing alarm.Redford wasn’t fighting like a normal human—she seemed impervious to pain, her strength amplified beyond what her small frame should possess.Adrenaline, Kari’s rational mind insisted.Psychotic breaks could produce seemingly superhuman abilities as the brain overrode normal limitations.

But something deeper, something connected to the stories her grandmother had told her as a child, whispered another explanation.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Kari said, blocking another strike but feeling her feet slide dangerously close to the ravine edge.

“Hurt me?”Redford’s laugh held no humor.“You can’t hurt what I’m becoming.But you can free what’s left of Elaine Redford.All it takes is the right ceremony.The right exchange.”

She lunged again, and this time the knife found its mark, slicing across Kari’s upper arm.Pain flared, hot and immediate, but Kari maintained her defensive stance, knowing she couldn’t retreat any further without plummeting into the ravine.

Redford paused, seeming to savor the moment, her head tilting again at that unnatural angle.Behind the mask, her eyes burned with triumph and anticipation.

“Perfect,” she whispered.“Now we begin.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Redford lunged forward with inhuman speed, one hand gripping Kari’s wounded arm while the other went straight for her throat.The impact drove Kari backward, stones skittering beneath her boots as she fought for balance at the ravine’s edge.Her service weapon, still in her right hand, was pinned awkwardly between their bodies, impossible to aim.

Redford’s fingers tightened around Kari’s windpipe, cutting off air with shocking strength.Darkness began to creep in at the edges of Kari’s vision as she struggled to break free, her lungs burning.

“The transition begins,” Redford whispered, her face inches from Kari’s, the mask’s hollow eyes seeming to stare directly into her soul.“Let it happen.Let me out.”

Kari’s free hand scrabbled desperately at her jacket pocket, fingers closing around Ruth’s medicine pouch.Without conscious thought, she pulled it free, pressing it against Redford’s face with her last reserves of strength.

The effect was instantaneous and unexpected.Redford recoiled as if burned, her grip on Kari’s throat slackening.Something like recognition flickered in her eyes—confusion, fear, a momentary return of the academic beneath the monster.

“What—” Redford gasped, her voice suddenly her own again.“What is that?”

Kari didn’t waste the opening, twisting violently to break free.The sudden movement sent both women stumbling dangerously close to the ravine’s edge.Stones broke loose beneath their feet, tumbling into darkness.Kari’s service weapon slipped from her grasp in the struggle, clattering across the rock before sliding over the precipice, lost to the depths below.

Disarmed but momentarily free, Kari fought to regain stable footing, clutching the medicine pouch like a talisman.The moment of clarity in Redford’s eyes was already fading, the predatory presence reasserting itself with frightening speed.

“No more distractions,” Redford snarled, slapping the pouch out of Kari’s hand.“No escape now.”

“Redford!”A new voice cut through the night—authoritative, familiar.

Daniels stood twenty yards away, his service weapon trained on Redford, stance perfect, face a mask of professional control.“FBI!Drop the knife and step away from Detective Blackhorse!”

Redford froze, head tilting at that unnatural angle as she assessed this new threat.For a heartbeat, Kari thought the professor might actually surrender and might let whatever momentary clarity the medicine pouch had triggered take hold.

Instead, Redford laughed—a sound that raised the hair on Kari’s arms.

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