The Medusa Prophecy

by Cindy Dees

  “Mamba!” Karen called as she rushed forward. “This kid’s having a seizure.”

  Karen knelt beside the teen and put her hands on his shoulders. She didn’t try to stop him from moving altogether, but restrained him just enough to keep him from injuring himself badly by hitting his head on the ground or rolling into the fire.

  Aleesha materialized out of the crowd in a matter of seconds. “I can give him a shot of muscle relaxant, or we can let him ride this seizure out.”

  Karen struggled to protect the youth from himself. He was incredibly strong, tossing and turning powerfully beneath her hands. It took all her formidable strength to hold him down. She grunted, “Naliki said these kids get violent during their seizures. They strike out at anyone around them. Might be best to knock them out.”

  “While I go get my bag, monitor his breathing and make sure he doesn’t swallow his tongue. This seizure seems confined mostly to his large muscle groups.”

  Karen shrugged off her parka and tucked it under the boy’s head to protect it from the rocky, frozen ground. The other Medusas gathered around, laying their hands on the youth’s limbs to help restrain and protect him. Karen put her hands on either side of the patient’s head to guard it from harm.

  Aleesha returned with her bag and dropped to her knees beside Karen. “What’s he on?”

  “Some sort of drug. Naliki doesn’t know what it is. Says it causes seizures, violent outbursts, unconsciousness and death.”

  Aleesha swore under her breath. “Didn’t Anders say something a few days ago about an outbreak of the same sort of symptoms among drug users in Oslo?”

  Karen frowned. “Yeah, I think so.”

  Aleesha was busy for the next couple minutes taking vitals on the unconscious kid and stabilizing him. Eventually, she muttered, “I gotta get access to a phone. This kid is a mess. Whatever he’s on is tearing him up from the inside out.”

  As Aleesha’s muscle relaxants and tranquilizers took effect, the rigidity left the boy’s body and he relaxed beneath the Medusas’ hands. A collective sound of awe went up from the crowd. Karen looked up, and realized everyone was staring at her.

  They’d just watched Aleesha administer treatment to this kid. Why in the hell were they all staring at her? Karen mumbled, exasperated, “Anders, Naliki, tell them I didn’t do anything. He had a seizure and we rendered basic first aid to keep him from hurting himself. Nothing more.”

  Anders answered dryly, “They won’t believe us. They saw you lay your hands on him and take the warrior spirit from him with their own eyes.”

  She glanced over at the other two boys who were still whooping and whirling, oblivious to their friend’s collapse, then glared up at Anders. “These kids are not possessed by Viking warriors! They’re high and acting like idiots. Tell your people, Naliki!”

  The shaman shrugged. “They will not believe me.”

  “Try,” Karen ground out. She let go of the kid’s now-still head and stood up to get out of the way so Aleesha could continue watching him. The crowd actually took a step back as Karen surged to her feet. She scowled even harder. An urge to commit violence washed over her. “I’m not a goddess!” she snapped.

  The crowd melted out of her path as she stormed away from the fire. And damned if they didn’t bow as she strode past them.

  She was getting out of here and finding Jack Scatalone if she had to walk all the way to Oslo to get the parts to build a homing device to track his happy ass down. She’d had it with all this Viking goddess crap. It was time to put an end to it once and for all and get the hell out of here.

  Chapter 11

  Lakvik, Norway, March 6, 4:00 a.m.

  There. She was done. Karen stared at the awkward jumble of wires and circuit boards on her sleeping bag. She’d worked on it most of the night while Anders slept peacefully on the other side of the fire. As best as she could tell, she’d just cobbled together a working signal detector and crude homing device. Only way to know if it worked would be to take it outside and test it. But she was freezing cold and it was really late. She’d grab a quick nap and then give her gizmo a go. She threw more fuel on the fire, which was doing precious little to stave off the frosty air.

  Carefully, she moved her tracking gadget aside and slid gratefully into the quick, light warmth of her down sleeping bag. After roasting near the bonfire for much of the evening, the dark and chill of the hut seemed even more intense than usual. It probably didn’t help that she was dead tired either. What a bizarre emotional roller coaster the day had been. Clearly, she needed to take a few hours and get a solid block of sleep to re-center her nervous system and cure the sleep-deprived crazies in her head.

  Except when she woke up a couple of hours later, she didn’t feel a whole hell of a lot better. When she tried to wake up Anders, he mumbled something about the whole village being hung over and not going anywhere soon. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Karen was jittery. Her nerves jangled and her hands wouldn’t stay still. The idea of sleeping held no appeal to her. Her head might say Anders was right, but no way was she going back to sleep.

  She lay down. Counted backwards from a hundred. Made it to one. Counted sheep. Counted dead grass roots sticking out of the sod walls. Tried self-hypnosis. Nothing worked. She was wired far too tight to get any more rest. And that was worrisome. Something was wrong with her. She never had trouble sleeping. Even on operational missions with tension through the roof, when it was her turn to stand down and rest, she could go unconscious instantly and sleep hard, any time, any place. Not so now.

  She tossed and turned for several hours. Eventually, Lakvik began to come to life as people finished sleeping off the effects of the party, or rather the booze that had flowed at the party.

  She jumped out of her sleeping bag, relieved beyond words at finally getting to move. It was an exercise in sheer torture to wait while Anders and her teammates got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, brushed teeth and donned their gear in what looked like intentional slow motion. It was all she could do not to fling their rifles at them and scream for them to get moving. But finally, the Medusas stood in the middle of the village, surrounded by most of the Sami men of hunting age.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Karen explained. “We need to find a Norwegian Army team of about six men who are hiding somewhere in this general vicinity, and we need to find them fast. You know the area and are superb hunters, and we’re hoping that some or all of you might be willing to help us.”

  One of the Sami men spoke up. “This is big country. To find a small group of men who do not want to be found will be like searching for a single blade of grass in a meadow.”

  Karen let a sharklike grin slide across her face. “That’s why I built us a gadget to help.” She held up the backpack in which she’d carefully tucked the signal detector. “I’ve built a homing device that should pick up radio signals from these guys. It won’t be exact, but it should lead us in the right direction and put us reasonably close to our targets.”

  The Samis smiled and nodded at that news, and the spokesman said, “Forgive me. I forgot for a moment with whom I spoke. Of course, you came up with a way to find your prey with ease.”

  Karen’s eyes narrowed. She was about to just declare herself Freya and tell them all to bow to her and call her Your Majesty. It would be less frustrating than continually trying to fight their misconceptions of her. She ground out with scant patience, “I studied engineering in college. It’s no big deal. I just wired up a gizmo that detects radio signals. Any first-year student could do it.”

  Vanessa muttered under her breath, “Give it up. You’ll never change these guys’ minds.”

  Karen glared at her boss. And then blinked in surprise. In the first place, Vanessa outranked her. Junior officers didn’t throw mutinous glares at their superiors. Ever. It was blatantly unprofessional, particularly in front of outsiders to the team. Second, she respected Vanessa. Loved her like a sister. The Medusas didn’t fi
ght among themselves. Their unity was perhaps their greatest strength. Vanessa stared back, clearly startled, herself.

  “I’m sorry,” Karen said quickly. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I’ve been really out of sorts the past day or two.”

  Vanessa nodded just a touch tersely. “I noticed. If there’s anything you need to get off your chest, I’m always available to listen.”

  Karen nodded glumly, disgusted with herself. She was turning into such a bitch. She took a deep breath. “Let’s turn on this machine and see if it works.”

  Isabella helped Karen carefully don the backpack without disturbing the jumble of wires. Then, Isabella connected the last wire to the battery. Cautiously, Karen held one earpiece up to her ear. It didn’t electrocute her, and even better, she heard faint static. She walked down Lakvik’s main street toward the east, and the static didn’t change noticeably. She swung north out to the edge of the tent city. The change was miniscule, but perhaps the static got just the tiniest bit fainter. To test her theory, she turned around and headed to the south side of town.

  All the while, the Sami men trailed along behind her in expectant silence. And as she strode around the village, she picked up more of an audience. By the time she reached the south end of the village and was sure the static had gotten slightly louder, she had an entire parade trailing along behind her. Children were being shushed in the back of the crowd. Women had stopped their chores and tagged along, and the Medusas brought up the rear of the whole thing, grinning at her over the heads of the shorter Sami people.

  Great. She’d gone from Freya to Pied Piper. At least he got the satisfaction of killing all the rats who followed him out of towns. She gritted her teeth, seated the headphones more securely on her head and marched south out of Lakvik. They could all come for all she cared. She was going to go find Jack and put an end to this stupidity for good.

  What the hell. If you can’t stop ’em, run to the front of the parade and act like you’re leading it. Whistling “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s Off To Work We Go,” she marched jauntily out of town.

  She stopped about ten minutes out of Lakvik and waved all the Samis behind her to silence. Fortunately, the women and children had mostly peeled off and headed back to town. The remaining Samis were experienced hunters. They knew how to be quiet. She listened to the static again. Yup, definitely louder than in town. She resumed walking south.

  About an hour out of Lakvik, it became clear that a course correction was needed. She went through the same routine, walking a bit to the east, then back to the west, and the static definitely got louder when she headed east. East she went.

  The good news was the vigorous exercise seemed to burn off the worst of her unreasoning fury.

  It was midafternoon and the sun was starting to go down when the static in her ears changed slightly. It took on a pulsing quality.

  Karen called out, “Hey, Adder. Come listen to this.”

  Karen held out the headphones to her teammate, who was the team’s communications expert. Isabella listened intently for several seconds. “We must be getting close enough to pick up their actual jamming signal instead of just the background field.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  Vanessa piped up and asked, “Any guesses as to how far we are from our targets?”

  Karen looked around. They were near the top of a high ridge facing east. “Well, they’re probably sitting on top of a mountain. We definitely know they’re in front of us, because the ridge line at our backs would block any direct signals from the west. I’d guess we’re no more than three miles away.”

  The other Medusas groaned. In the three miles stretching away at their feet, there must’ve been at least twenty mountain peaks. Karen concurred. She didn’t relish the idea of scaling every last one of them. Damn that Jack for putting such a difficult task in front of them! Who did he think he was, anyway? What kind of sadistic instructor tortured his students like this? The guy seriously needed taking down a peg or two. A brief, satisfying image flashed into her head of her hands around his throat, his face red-purple, his veins bulging, his eyes panicked. Aggression surged through her. Oh, yeah. They needed to find Jack. The sooner the better. Her palms itched to feel his throat.

  “Hey, Python. Slow up there!” It was Vanessa.

  Karen started and glanced over her shoulder. She was all but running on her snowshoes, and the only person keeping up with her was Anders. No surprise, there. He wasn’t an Olympic cross-country skier for nothing. But everyone else was straggling well behind. She slowed down to a pace mere mortals might be able to keep up with.

  At about eight o’clock, the Samis wanted to stop and make camp for the night. Wimps.

  Karen had drawn breath to tell them to get a move on and quit whining when Vanessa intervened. “That’s a great idea, gentlemen. Is there anywhere near here you’d suggest?”

  Karen fumed inwardly. The bitch! This was her hunt for Jack, not Vanessa’s. And she was the one the Samis had asked about stopping, not Vanessa. Her jaw set in fury, she declined an offer by her teammates to share an igloo with them. She’d build her own damn shelter, thank you very much. Adrenaline made hefting the heavy roof blocks into place a piece of cake. She was vaguely aware of the Samis sneaking awed peeks at her as she attacked the snow, but she didn’t much care. So she was strong. Big freaking deal.

  She endured sitting around the campfire, sharing supper with the Medusas and the Samis, but after a while, the whole kumbayah atmosphere was more than she could stand. Surly, she retired to her igloo to rest. She fiddled with the homing beacon a bit to narrow the signal bandwidth, then she lay down on her sleeping bag, too restless to sleep.

  Her head said she needed some real zzz’s, but her body disagreed. She was a bundle of nerves and twitchy muscles. She needed to move, dammit! Jack Scatalone was out there somewhere, and her gut twisted with the need to cause him pain. To see blood fly. Oh, yes. It was time to move.

  She waited until she thought everyone would be tucked in for the night, and then donned her Arctic camo gear and grabbed the signal tracker. She crawled out of her igloo and glanced around the camp. Igloos glowed here and there, low yellow humps in the landscape of moonlit blue-white. But the camp was still. No one moved about. Perfect.

  She crept silently out of the site and into night, her killer instincts fully and gleefully aroused.

  Oslo, Norway, March 6

  Jens closed Astrid’s bedroom door quietly. Thank God she was finally asleep. She’d lain there for hours, just staring up at the ceiling. It would’ve been so much easier to comfort her if she’d cried or screamed or had hysterics. Personally, he didn’t give a shit if Willie was dead. But his baby girl’s pain was doubly his pain.

  As he tiptoed down the stairs, he pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed Ivo. “Hey, partner. I got a favor to ask you.”

  The kid sounded surprised. “Sure. What is it?”

  “Will you take my daughter out?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Jens had to smile at the shock vibrating through Ivo’s voice. “Astrid’s pretty torn up about her boyfriend’s murder.”

  “I don’t think rebound dating is going to ease her pain, sir—”

  “This isn’t about her pain. Willie, the dead boyfriend, was passing her pills to take. She doesn’t know what they were, and she’s afraid—hell, I’m afraid—they were tainted. She says she met the guy Willie got his drugs from once. She thinks she might recognize the dealer if she saw him again.”

  Ivo swore quietly, then asked quickly, “What do you need me to do?”

  “Take her out to some of the clubs Willie and she used to hang out at. See if she can spot his supplier. I’m not going to sleep decently until I’ve tracked down these pills and know she’s going to be okay.”

  Jens sat in his usual armchair in the living room, pretending to read a newspaper while he eavesdropped. Ivo was actually doing a really good job of talking to Astrid. The kid had gotten her
to open up a hell of a lot more than he had in the past twenty-four hours.

  “…think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?” Ivo was asking.

  “I think so. He looked Mediterranean. You know. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tanned skin.”

  “Was he a big guy? Short? How was he built?”

  The good news was Astrid had grown up a cop’s daughter. Her powers both of observation and description were pretty good. She answered, “Medium height. Slender build. But the guys with him were big. Beefy.”

  “How many guys?” Ivo asked calmly.

  Jens peeked over his paper at Astrid as she considered the question. Man, his partner was doing a great job of keeping her relaxed. Focused. He couldn’t have—hadn’t—done so well himself. All he’d managed to get out of Astrid were monosyllabic mumbles for answers and red-rimmed eyes that refused to shed their tears.

  Ivo was talking again. “Do you think you could work with a sketch artist to come up with a composite of this guy?”

  Astrid shrugged. “Maybe. It wouldn’t be very detailed.”

  “Anything’s better than nothing,” Ivo replied placidly.

  “You don’t even know if this guy’s the one passing the tainted drugs,” she retorted.

  Ivo shrugged. “Well, you said Nicklaus was getting his stuff from Willie. And Nicklaus obviously got a hold of some of the tainted drugs. It’s not a bad guess that Willie’s supplier was the source of the stuff. Once we catch the guy you saw, we’ll catch the guy he got his drugs from, and the guy he got his drugs from, and so on, until we reach the source.”

  She released a wobbly breath.

  Ivo reached out and took both her hands in his. Gazed deep into her eyes. Totally unprofessional. Said gently, “You’re doing great, Astrid.”

  His daughter flashed a watery, grateful smile at Ivo. The first smile Jens had seen since he broke the news to her yesterday. He was surprised that his protective instincts didn’t flare at the exchange. But if his partner could make her smile, Jens was all for it.