by Jeff D Ellis
I found a camp with what I assume is Willow’s tree, but she isn’t here. I will wait for you here before searching further.
A few moments later, the rest of the group entered the room.
Ash gasped. “That’s her tree! Why would someone set it up here underground?”
David changed back. “You didn’t know anything about this area?”
“I had no idea. I have never been down the passage. Dad said it was his escape plan and to stay clear unless it was an emergency. I thought he must have dangerous stuff down here, so I stayed clear.”
“Did your mother come down here often?”
“Until the day I was hurt, and you saved me, I had never seen her leave that way. In general, I wasn’t here often. Normally I came by Dad’s office at Thorn Technologies and then I processed lab results after hours from my office at UW.”
“I’ve noticed a lot of tracks around the room, but some end at this rock wall over here. Does it mean anything you, Ash?”
“Nothing Dryad-related, or for that matter anything in here other than the tree. I’m amazed the tree has done so well when Mom can’t join with it anymore.”
“You’re sure it’s her tree?”
Ash moved over to the tree and put her hands on it. “It’s her tree. She hasn’t joined with it in a very long time.”
David went back to the rock wall to inspect it closer. It had to be a secret door of some sort, but he couldn’t work out how to activate it. “Guys, any ideas on how to open this? It’s not like the entrance to the lab in the underground we found.”
There weren’t tracks leading to other areas where some activation device was concealed. Maybe it could only be opened from the other side.
David shook his head. “I’m going to check out some of the other passages. Stay here but keep your eyes open.”
Abby nodded. “Stay in touch and don’t go too far without us moving to support positions behind you.”
David transformed back into a jaguar.
Hammer laughed. “I don’t think I will ever get used to seeing that.”
David trotted down the hall back to the junction and took the other branch. He didn’t find any magical tracks to follow in this direction, but he was picking up an oppressive feeling. It didn’t register as a magical aura, but it was there. He slowed his pace as he continued into the darkness. A door up ahead gave off a faint light bleeding around its edges. After changing back to normal, he slipped the door open. The smell hit him. Windigos had been here.
The room contained four cells along one side. In the ceiling above one cell, he saw a chute big enough to drop bodies down into it. Was this how they fed a Windigo or captured Humans? The next cell was empty, but he found the source of the smell. The final two cells contained a Windigo each. Their screams and pounding on the bars were almost deafening.
Instinctively David backed away and raised his FN P90 to aim at the head of the first of them. Their feral hungry eyes stared at him unafraid. They must have been somewhat young, since they were hardly larger than Humans and smaller than the one he killed in the Underground. Why did they need Hammer when they could have tested the cure on them? After looking closer at them, he was able to determine that the cure had been tested on them and failed. Hammer was lucky to have survived the cure.
What should he do about them? It would be kinder, and safer for others, to put them out of their starvation. But he couldn’t do it. There weren’t any other exits. He decided to head back.
***
Hammer ran his hands over the stone wall, and it shifted. “Guys …”
Abby quickly moved to his side. “What did you do?”
“I was running my hands over the wall trying to find a crack or something. I didn’t push or anything.”
“It must be reacting to you. I did the same thing with no results. Keep at it and see if it opens.”
“Why would it matter who is touching the wall?”
“I’ve done a lot of magic, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find a door that knows who should be let in.”
Ash shook her head. “It’s not any type of Dryad magic, or technology that I know of.”
Hammer went back to feeling up the wall and it opened into a wide passageway that even a Windigo could go through.
David, Hammer got the rock wall open.
Abby, I hit a dead end. Wait for me.
“David’s on his way and wants us to wait for him.”
“Abby, I hear something moving back there.”
Abby took a position at the entrance. “Everybody back.”
Hammer put his arm out in front of Ash. “Stay behind me.”
Ash tried to push past him. “Remember, we try to calm her and bring her in alive.”
“Yes, but do it from behind me where I can protect you if that doesn’t work.”
The sounds were getting farther away.
“Abby, we need to follow before she gets away.”
“Please, Abby. She will listen to me.”
David, we can’t wait any longer. We are slowly moving forward. Hurry.
Don’t do it, Abby. You don’t know what you might find. It may not be Willow. I came across two young Windigos.
I can’t hold Ash back. If we don’t start moving, she is going to bolt and go on her own. It’s my decision. Hurry.
“Okay, Ash, but it might not be her. David ran across two other Windigos in his search.”
“I know it’s her. This is her tree. I’ll go alone if I have to.”
Abby readied her P90 and started moving into the passage. “Stay behind, Hammer.”
The Chief put her in charge today and she couldn’t let second thoughts cloud her decisions.
Foul air washed over her as she stepped into the hall.
***
David panicked thinking about the team running into a Windigo without him. Changing into a jaguar, he bolted hard to catch up. It was the fastest form he could take without flying and the confined spaces in the dark pushed that thought from his mind. The walls of the rough-cut passages were a blur. His turn came up faster than he expected. His shoulder bumped hard off the corner from not slowing down enough to turn. Jaguars are built more as stalk and ambush hunters than chasing down prey, but they still could sprint fifty miles per hour, and while agile, it still took time to turn more than two hundred pounds of big cat at a right angle. His side ached where he had scraped the wall.
He entered the room with the tree, but everyone was gone, and whatever secret door they had used was no longer open.
Then his worst fear came to life. The sound of gunfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
More than words
THE TEAM PROGRESSED down the corridor with Abby in the lead. The noise up ahead was getting louder. Suddenly, a loud crash came from behind them.
Abby looked over her shoulder. “What was that noise?”
Hammer turned. “That was the sound of our exit closing. We’re on our own now.”
Abby clenched her jaw. “We’ll have to find another way out. Ash, I hope you’re right about Willow.”
As they followed the path, they descended deeper underground. Abby slowed the pace to keep from sliding in the loose dirt. The path ended in a large circular room. The light from Abby’s P90 illuminated bones and Human body parts littering the ground. As she extended the light farther in, she found a giant of a Windigo at least ten-foot-tall chewing on someone’s leg. Gore dripped down its emaciated gray skin. It looked at her with red glowing sunken eyes. Abby froze.
Ash pushed her way forward. “Mother, it’s me, Ash. We’re here to help.”
The Windigo let out an ear-piercing scream. It threw the leg at them and grabbed a femur from the ground, and then shuffled in their direction. Ash stood her ground.
“Mother, stop that. Calm down and we can talk.”
Abby could feel anger radiating from the Windigo. “Ash, it’s not working. She is really pissed.”
The monster was gaining speed
. Abby could see its heart beating faster. She noticed Ash was turning pale with her eyes shut, hands jammed into her armpits. She nodded at Hammer. “Retreat. Carry Ash if you have too.”
The Windigo approached like an oncoming train. Abby opened fire. The tracer rounds lit up the room as she emptied the fifty-round magazine into its chest which only slowed it down.
Abby yelled “RUN!!!” She swapped in a fresh magazine while dropping the empty on the ground. After letting off a short burst, she took her own advice and started running away.
“Hammer, get that door open or we’re all dead!”
***
David was starting to despair when the wall started to swing open.
Hammer yelled, “Take Ash from me.”
Rushing forward, David grabbed Ash and moved her to the far side of the room while Hammer wedged himself against the door to hold it open while firing his pistol down the hall. Abby hugged the side of the doorway as she passed by, almost falling over as she entered the room. The Windigo hit the doorway a second behind Abby, grabbing hold of Hammer as it entered.
David jockeyed for a position where he could fire at the Windigo, but Hammer was in the way. With a sickening crunch, the Windigo snapped Hammer’s back with a practiced ease and tossed him away like a child throwing a tantrum. David could see damage to its chest, but some of the wounds were already starting to heal. The tracer rounds were working better than normal but it wasn’t enough to put her down, only leave her in a blind rage. This Windigo was much larger than the one he’d fought before. He figured it would be the most vulnerable at its neck.
David always felt like Black Panther from the movies when he shifted into a Were-jaguar. It was too bad his claws couldn’t cut through metal, but it still gave him his best chance, with three-inch razor-sharp claws sticking from his paws. It might give him the ability to shred its neck and maybe disable it long enough for a kill. Unlike last time, he didn’t try to crush its windpipe with his teeth. He didn’t want to risk getting Windigo blood in his mouth.
After checking to make sure Abby was protecting Ash, David let out a deep roar and ran at the Windigo. Ducking under its fist full of sharp nails, he slashed out across its abdomen and rolled to the side and behind it. Blood oozed from the five slash marks he left, but it was mostly an annoyance to the monster. But he had drawn first blood. His goal was to keep the monster off balance until he could go for its neck. He landed a kick to the back of its leg, which made it turn to face him. Abby took the opportunity to shoot three rounds into its back which the monster simply shrugged off like a bothersome fly. David shot a snap-kick to the chest, but the monster shrugged it off without moving even an inch backwards. Lashing out at David, it tossed him several feet back, where he rolled to lessen the impact. He sprang back to his feet, but his left arm wasn’t working as it should. It would heal quickly, but not fast enough to help unless he shifted. The monster seemed to smile at his discomfort. David slashed out with his right paw getting it to back away and then shifted back to Human. The left arm felt much better after the shift and was maybe ninety percent functional. Now that he was in his Human form, he had access to his weapons. He drew his pistol and shot two rounds into the Windigo’s neck. Its breath gurgled in its throat.
David holstered his pistol and looked over at Abby and yelled, “Hawk!”
She nodded and tossed him her tomahawk that had been given magical blessings. He caught it and hacked in the direction of the Windigo, and was lucky to make contact with its left wrist cleaving through flesh, leaving the hand on the ground. It screamed in anger and pain clutching at its wrist. Lunging, David sunk the tomahawk deep into its injured neck. It sank to its knees. David swung again, separating head from body.
Looking around for other threats, he finally noticed fresh blood was everywhere, and then he saw Hammer on the ground, twisted and broken. “Everybody, stay back. Don’t take chances with the blood.”
Ash was sobbing in Abby’s arms. Kneeling next to Hammer, David confirmed he was dead. Whatever abilities the so-called cure had given him, it wasn’t enough to overcome the level of trauma he received in an instant.
“Abby, are you hurt?”
She pointed at Hammer. “Hammer.”
“I checked. There is nothing we can do for him. Do you need medical?”
She looked at Ash and shook her head. She wrapped her arms tightly around the sobbing woman. “We’re okay.”
David moved to the far side of the room and called the Chief. “We need a clean-up team ASAP at our location.”
“Do you need medical?”
“Hammer is dead, as well as Willow.”
“Understood.”
“One last thing. I found two live young Windigos locked up in cells.”
“I can’t risk a clean-up crew until that is taken care of.”
“Understood.”
David approached the women slowly. He stood silently with them for a moment, letting Ash grieve. He whispered, “Abby, take Ash up to the garage and wait for the clean-up crew. I’ll join you in a few.”
***
Abby guided Ash up to the place they had entered the building. She looked over her shoulder and watched David take the fork in the path along with her tomahawk and disappear.
They got back to the large room to wait for the cleaners. Abby found Ash a seat. She seemed slightly better but was still very shaken up. Abby put her arm around her shoulder.
Ash sobbed. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t listen to me. Why? They shouldn’t have had to die.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It’s not your fault. You and David saved me. I feel like it’s my fault that she was so out of control.”
“Did you ever have to calm Willow by yourself?”
“My dad was always there, but it shouldn’t have mattered.”
“Maybe it was your dad all along that actually gained control over the Windigo.”
Ash wiped her eyes. “I feel so stupid to have put you all in danger. I shouldn’t have pushed to rush in after her.”
“It was my decision.”
“I didn’t leave you any choice and now they are dead.”
“At least you tried to help your mom. That is more than I can say about Otis Thorn.”
“It’s like I don’t even know him. When Mom was infected, it changed him, but I thought it was his focus on helping her.”
“David found two Windigos locked up in cells. Do you know why the cure wasn’t tested on them?”
“I didn’t know anything about them. I feel like I got Frank killed today. I could’ve gotten us all killed.”
Ash gasped. She saw David walk into the room with blood stains covering his clothes.
David, could you go wait outside? You look like an axe murderer who just killed her mother.
Sorry for being so insensitive. I’ll be right back.
David left the room. He came back looking like the Siberian husky he had as a pet when he was a kid. Ash brightened up when she saw him. Who wouldn’t smile at the sight of a goofy husky wagging its tail? David knew how to sell it.
Ash put her hand out. “Now where did you come from, boy?”
Abby gave him a pet. “We thought you needed a little emotional support.”
“You know this dog? Where did he come from?”
David laid down at Ash’s feet and pressed up against her.
Then a light bulb went on over Ash’s head. “David?”
Abby laughed. “You should feel special. He has only taken this form once before in his life when he was trying to learn his abilities. Is it working?”
Ash nodded. “Thanks, guys. I’m ready to go back to my cage now.”
Abby, the cleaners are here. Make sure they clean up both branches of the passages. I’ll go wait with Ash at your SUV. I don’t want to leave her alone and we can deal with my clothes in private back at the office.
Abby handed Ash the keys to the SUV. “Ash, why don’t you take our furry friend here
back to the SUV and wait for me there. I’ll only be a few minutes getting these guys started.”
It brought a smile to Abby’s face seeing David trotting at Ash’s leg providing her support as they left. It would be hard enough when she had to relive it all during the debrief.
She decided to check in with the Chief. “The cleaners are here, and we will be heading back in a few minutes. I’m worried about Ash. She is in a bit of shock over Willow killing Hammer and having Willow killed in front of her.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
“Chief, can we work out some sort of deal for her? I feel like she was almost as much of a victim of Otis Thorn as Hammer was.”
“We can talk about this when you get back.”
“It was a bit too much for her to see David covered in her mother’s blood, so expect him to be looking like a dog when we arrive.”
“Interesting! I didn’t know he had that in him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Deals
DAVID AND ABBY were summoned to the Chief’s office the moment they returned.
The Chief nodded. “Close the door behind you. Abby, I put you in charge on the search. Why don’t you start.”