Chapter 15




Jax felt he had been pounding on the door of Bone’s garage for an hour. Finally, he heard the click of the lock and they door opened and he was greeted by the barrel of a shotgun.
“Whoa Bone come on its just me,” Jax said quickly with his hands up in surrender as Bone stepped closer to him without lowering his gun.
“Yeah I know it’s you, the hell you doin’ here?” Bone replied. His voice was raspy like he had a sore throat.
“I’m not drunk if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”
“No? Then why are you here?”
Bone kept his shotgun pointed at Jax.
“Look, I just escaped out of the hospital. My face is throbbing and probably bleeding, my feet are cut up and also bleeding. I need to clean up.”
Jax moved closer to under the flood light to show Bone his bandages.
Bone finally lowered his gun but still stared at Jax suspisciously.
“Why escape from the hospital? You look pretty banged up.”
“It’s a long story, will you let me in?”

Bone thought about it for a second but remembering that day’s earlier events he stepped aside to let Jax in.
“The hell happened to you boy?” Bones said putting his shotgun back into its safe.
“First tell me why your voice sounds like you swallowed sand,” Jax said while limping into bathroom holding a pair of pliers.
“My damn nephew, at least I think it was him. He came in here wanting a new bike but I didn’t recognize him, he looked so different like he had aged 10 years or something.”
The glass in Jax’s right foot were embedded deeper than he thought as he dug the plier into his skin to pull the first one out causing him to growl in agony
He tried to listen to what Bone was saying but the pain distracted him too much until he heard…,
“He grabbed my throat and squeezed it with this strength that was like…inhuman. He was like an animal, a wolf.”
“He attacked you?” Jax said loudly feeling shocked that Koda would even hurt his uncle.
“Sort of but not really, I think he just wanted to show me who was boss or something, he didn’t want to kill me just spook me a bit. He succeeded all right.”

Jax finally pulled out the last glass shard and now his foot had gaping cuts on them, he was going to need stitches but there was no way he was going back to that hospital so he grabbed a couple of towels and wrapped his foot then taped it up with duct tape.
He slowly got up, easing his weight on his right foot. The pain was still agonizing. Looking in the mirror, his wounds had bled some through the bandages; enough that he needed to take them off if he wanted to avoid infection. He picked at the tape near his jawline, carefully pulling it back, wincing as the adhesive pulled at his skin.
While carefully dabbing at the deep scratches on his face with water they seemed better than they were, the swelling had gone down but they were still very raw. He decided to keep the bandages off; exposure to air would help them heal quicker.
“What do you think happened to him?” he asked, limping out the bathroom heading for the small couch Bone was sitting on.
Bone sighed heavily, “Are you familiar with our tribe stories?”
“A little but not much, not a lot of white folks are around here are.”
Bone told Jax the old tribe stories of the Skinwalkers and how once they become what they were; there was no way back except death.
Jax believed this happened with Koda and now felt that his feeling of revenge against him was all the more the right choice. He then told Bone of his dream he had a couple of night before, of how he watched Koda kill his family.
“Koda attacked you too?” Bone asked pointing to all his injuries.
“Yeah, he got me good but it’s what he did to Shilah and their mom is what the worst part is.”
A deep cold swept over Bone as Jax told him what happened the other night. He couldn’t believe it.
Koda had killed his own family.
“How come he didn’t kill you?” Jax said breaking Bone out of his thoughts.
Bone looked at him without an answer except, “Don’t know.”


Koda pushed the accelerator on his bike, feeling the speed reach higher and higher until the desert was a whizzing blur. A surging power flowed through him. It was more powerful than he had ever felt, like the evil was beginning to take over, just piece by piece.
He knew soon that nothing could over power him.
Lightning flashed above him. Another to his side, and then a large white blast exploded in front of Koda, blinding him, causing the bike to skid on the road and throwing him off, sliding down the highway at skin tearing speed.
He finally dragged to a stop, feeling as if every inch of his skin had been ripped off by a giant sander. His whole body burned so badly that he couldn’t breathe.
A blast of cold misty air enveloped him, softly raising him up as if it was cradeling him. The burning pain started to subside.
Then a ghostly figure materialized in front of him in the shape of a man.
Iah.

“Let this be a warning to you,” his voice was like a ghostly echo flowing through a canyon.
Iah stared down at Koda with his moon light eyes.
“You can never over power me…ever.”
The mist that cradled him seeped into his lungs as he drifted to sleep.