Sacred Ground

by Mercedes Lackey

  I'm dead, he thought, his mouth going dry with a terror so profound it couldn't even be called fear.

  Then Jennie pulled something out of the inside of her jacket; a beaded feather-no, two feathers, eagle-tail and eagle-covert bound together with beadwork, like a peyote-fan, but different in a way that felt important. She held it before her like a shield-

  He blinked to clear his eyes of the strange triple vision that suddenly came over him, but the vision remained. There was Jennie, legs braced slightly apart, the Jennie he knew, in blue jeans and a beat-up jacket decorated with Osage ribbon-work embroidery and ribbon-weaving-

  And Jennie, in full Osage regalia, but with some additions; a kind of shell necklace he knew was only supposed to be worn by men, a beaded Tzi-sho eagle feather braided into the hair on one side of her head, and a beaded Hunkah feather on the other, a modified warrior's roach, and some other things that she didn't wear to the powwows-

  And over all that, a bird. A kestrel. And the second and third images were a lot stronger than the "real" one.

  The Little People slowly raised their eyes, and stared instead at Jennie, and David began to hope that maybe he wasn't going to die after all.

  One of the Little People straightened up from his crouch. He stood much taller than Jennie; he must have been at least six feet in height, and towered over her, but she didn't seem the least intimidated.

  He said something in what David recognized as Osage; he didn't know much of the language, but it was Siouan in derivation, and he knew Lakotah. He understood just enough to get the basics.

  You have interfered with our hunt. This is our rightful prey.

  She shook her head, and replied in the same tongue.

  David didn't understand any of what she said, and it was a fairly long speech. The rest of the Little People straightened and surrounded her, looking down at her, ignoring him.

  Oh, please don't make them mad, Jennie. I don't think kung fu, or whatever it is you know, works on them.

  Finally she finished with something he vaguely understood. Sorry about this, but he's with me. He's a little stupid, please forgive him.

  He didn't know whether to kiss or kick her. Maybe he'd better not do either. They might not like it.

  The leader looked down at her, taking her measure; looked down at David, and there was no mistaking the contempt in his eyes. Finally he raised his chin in agreement, though it was obvious that he did so grudgingly. The glitter in his eyes spoke volumes. Here was a man, saved by a woman who was more warrior than he was, at least in the estimation of the Little People. David felt his ears reddening.

  The leader folded his arms across his chest, and slowly faded from view; the rest of the Little People followed him a heartbeat later. And the strange triple vision of Jennie faded as well, leaving only the Jennie he knew. David finally remembered to breathe. He thought that Jennie would say something, probably scathing, but she ignored him. Instead, she tucked her feathers back into her coat and returned to the place where he'd been crouching, and dropped down to sit on her heels and stare at the medicine-pouch he'd found. . . .

  Which was no longer so desirable. In fact, he didn't want it at all anymore; his earlier lust for it made him a little nauseous.

  She stayed there for an awfully long time as he slowly picked himself up out of the dirt and assessed the damages. Not bad, really. A couple of bruised ribs, some other bumps and bruises and scrapes. She didn't seem the least interested in him anymore, and he was torn between being fawningly grateful and really pissed off. If there was a death worse than fate-well, she'd just saved him from it.

  If the Little People had gotten hold of me, they'd have killed me, and they'd have taken their time about it. Not only that, but I'd have had to join them. ...

  He shuddered, and his nausea increased. An eternity of hunger and frustration, never being able to leave the earth, never doing anything constructive . . . and he could just imagine the reaction Calligan and the press would have had to finding him cold-dead on Calligan's property.

  Calligan would have had a field day, and David probably would have inadvertently taken a lot of innocent people down with him.

  Not an hour ago, he'd scoffed at the Little People as being no more than superstitious drivel. Oh, he was a believer now.

  Jennie continued to ignore him. He decided not to say anything. In a strange way, he was actually afraid of her. Where had she gotten that kind of power?

  Maybe the stuff she had done the night he'd come over wasn't all stage-magic crap after all.

  Maybe? Get real, Spotted Horse. She's got it, whatever it is. You should be glad she just shoved you out of her house, instead of a million other things she could have done to you for talking to her like that.

  In his mind, she took on a kind of mythic status; a kind of Great Mother, like Spider Woman or Changing Woman. He wondered if he should just try to slip away before she noticed him again.

  Then she spoke, and the sarcastic tone and completely ordinary words shredded his building mental image of her to rags.

  "You blow your own mouth off often enough," she said quietly, "you happen to know anything about bombs?"

  Bombs? He blinked, suppressed an automatic and equally sarcastic reply, and walked over to join her.

  She had his penlight in her hand; evidently he'd dropped it when she hit him. She had it focused on the medicine-pouch, and she had moved some of the dirt from around it. Now he saw the trip wires leading to it-and now he knew why the Little People had been waiting for him. They hadn't been planning on killing him themselves; they were going to let him blow himself to pieces.

  "Happens I do," he said, carefully. "At least, I do know about things that are this primitive. We had to learn how to look for bombs in our cars, and booby traps people would set up in barricades."

  She glanced at him sideways, but didn't comment. She didn't have to; it was all there in her glance. He took a deep breath to calm himself; he'd earned that particular doubtful glance.

  "Honest," he said, with complete truthfulness. "Jennie, I can swear to you that I have never set a bomb in my life, and I only took apart bombs that whites set on Native property. Okay?"

  She nodded. "Okay. So, how about if I hold the light and you deal with this one?"

  He was still wearing his rubber gloves; she couldn't possibly have missed that, but she didn't say anything about it. The bomb was ridiculously simple to take apart, leaving them with a potentially dangerous device, and a "device" that was probably equally dangerous, in another direction entirely.

  "Now what?" he asked.

  "Now we take this sucker back to my car to store as evidence," she said. "You carry it; you've got the gloves, and if there are any latent prints I don't want them messed up. I'd let you take it, but since you're a known activist, if anyone got probable cause to search you and your property-"

  "Yeah." She was right, dammit. "Why not just leave it here for the cops to find?"

  She tucked the medicine-pouch inside her jacket and dusted her hands off before answering him. "Because I'm afraid it won't be here in the morning," she finally said. "I'm afraid it's going to mysteriously disappear. It was meant for me. You just happened to fall over it."

  He didn't quite snort at what he would have considered an outrageous statement a few hours ago. He simply amended it. "You, or anyone else who might have recognized it for what it was. There are supposed to be some O.U. people here, sooner or later. It would really look bad to blow one of them up."

  She held one hand over the lump in her jacket where the medicine-pouch was, and nodded, slowly. "That's true, and I can't explain it, but I know it was meant for me. And I would probably have done just what you started to do if you hadn't gotten there first and sprung the trap. I wasn't looking for a trap like that."

  He thought about the sudden avarice that had overcome him at the sight of the pouch, and his mouth went dry again. This was getting to be a lot more than he had bargained for.

  She c
ontinued, gesturing for him to pick up the remains of the bomb. "I didn't even see the bomb until after I spotted you, and I-ah-let's just say I used medicine to find out who and what you were."

  He let out his breath in a sigh, and shook his head. "If I say I'm confused-it's been a strange night." He gathered up the explosives and the rest of the component parts and followed her. Presumably she'd parked her truck somewhere nearby.

  Strange night, hell. I've been figuring she was just pushing buttons, and here she is talking about and using Medicine like it was part of her. Maybe it is. . . .

  "Yeah." That was all she said, but it sounded, if not conciliatory, at least a little less hostile.

  Apologize, Spotted Horse. Get it over with.

  He gritted his teeth, then unclenched his jaw, and calmed himself enough that the words wouldn't sound forced or false. "Jennie, I'm sorry. I've said a lot of stuff that was out of line. I think maybe we are on the same side. Maybe we ought to start at least talking a little more."

  She made a little skeptical sound, but she didn't tell him to go jump a cactus. Finally, as they reached a looming shape that turned out to be her little Brat, she answered.

  "Put that stuff on the floorboards and follow me home," she said, sounding more tired than brusque. "We need to talk."

  _CHAPTER ELEVEN

  jennifer finally sent David back to his motel at about three in the morning, after she realized she had begun to repeat herself. Her eyes felt swollen, and they had begun to burn with fatigue-although Grandfather was still wide awake and perfectly prepared to sit in on the discussion if it carried on till dawn.

  At least they were friends again-or as much friends as she, wary and watching, would permit. Grandfather had helped with that.

  So had the fact that David had apologized.

  David hinted he wouldn't mind staying; she ignored the hints. He gave her a mournful look as she opened the door for him-in the normal fashion this time. She blithely waved good-bye and shut the door as soon as he was on the sidewalk.

  She rested her back against the door for a moment, then locked it, and walked back through the house to her bedroom, turning off lights as she went. Grandfather was already in his room; as she passed his door, light shone from the crack underneath it. Just as well; she wasn't up to any more deep discussions at the moment.

  At least she and David had achieved a truce, if not precisely a reconciliation. And at this point, she wasn't certain she wanted a reconciliation, with all the emotional baggage that came with one. She wasn't even certain she wanted a relationship that didn't involve a reconciliation! It wasn't as if she didn't have her hands full.

  Full in more ways than one. She still had the mundane investigation for the insurance company, a couple loose ends to wrap up for other clients, and her own private investigation of Calligan and the looting of the burial ground to deal with. The last thing she needed at the moment was David Spotted Horse on her doorstep.

  Or in my bed.

  Even if he had completely changed his ways, there were still certain demands to be met when one had a lover. . . .

  She closed her bedroom door, and shook her head. "No," she said aloud. "I don't think so."

  Not with what Grandfather had taken to his room to complicate an already complicated situation. David had turned the trap, bait and all, over to her with only minimal argument. The medicine-pouch was Osage, was from one of the plundered cairns, and there was no way to tell how it had gotten there, or even how long it had been there.

  She had turned it over to Grandfather after determining where it had come from. Handling it was not her concern at the moment. There was another car in the back drive-it was Mooncrow's and he was a perfectly good driver. He could very easily take the pouch back and reinter it, if that was what was needed.

  She shook her head, and went straight to bed, wondering if she would ever learn anything more than that.

  Unfortunately, the bomb wasn't likely to tell her much of anything. The trigger had been a simple one, a trip wire. The explosives could be found at any construction site where blasting might be needed, including any of Calligan's. In the morning she would dust the bomb for prints, but even if she found them, unless the owner of said fingerprints had a criminal record, it wasn't likely she'd find a match. Her request for a match check would go into a long queue of other similar requests from private agents-which had a lower priority than the requests from law-enforcement agencies. So even if she found prints and the bombmaker did have a criminal record, she might never get an ID until I after the case was solved or something forced her off of it.

  Mooncrow couldn't make anything more of the pouch than she could, except to assure her that although Watches-Over-The-Land had made it, it had not belonged to him. In a way that was both reassuring and disappointing. It would i have been good to recover at least one of her ancestor's looted possessions, but she wasn't certain she had whatever it took to handle something once belonging to a shaman as [ powerful as her forefather had been.

  In the end, when she looked at the clock in her headboard and saw the time, she realized that all she was going to do now was think in circles. Almost four in the morning, and she knew very well she was completely exhausted. She stripped and climbed into bed; but once she turned off the lights, she stared up at the ceiling, unable to go to sleep.

  Well, I can force myself, she thought. I can make myself relax if I want to. But do I want to? Obviously there's still something bothering my subconscious. I suppose if I don't deal with it, it 'II be showing up in my dreams. I sure as hell don't need that.

  It wasn't hard to figure out what that something was. David Spotted Horse, that's-what. He'd come back like the proverbial tomcat.

  Though tonight he'd probably lost one of his nine lives from fright alone. He'd had a good scare thrown into him by the Little People. . . .

  But now that she thought about it, she wasn't entirely certain that he had been in real danger after she knocked him on his ass. A scare might have been all they intended after that moment. They were so unpredictable; they were perfectly capable of changing their minds within a few seconds.

  They 're almost as contrary as Mooncrow. Hard to tell what they intend from one moment to the next. Certainly the leader had been willing to listen to her, and although he had given in, it had been without much of a protest, much less a fight. Was that due to the effectiveness of her protections, to her own ability, or to the fact that they had decided not to bother with David, anymore and accept that she was protecting him? There was no way to tell besides asking them, and no guarantee that they'd tell the truth if she did.

  Oh, if David had managed to get himself killed, they'd have taken him, all right. He fit right into the category of "those condemned to roam the earth, out of the sight of Wah-K'on-Tah" There wouldn't have been enough left of him to paint if the bomb had gone off in his face; he'd have been lawful prey. Messing with stolen Osage relics, dying without paint, being buried without paint-she had the feeling they'd have had him even if he'd been white.

  Granted, he was a Cherokee, and normally Osage of her forefather's time hadn't much use for the Thing-On-Its-Head People, but these were mi-ah-luschka, and they were a law unto themselves. It didn't take much to wind up swelling their ranks, if they decided to take you.

  But after she had saved him from blowing himself to bloody bits, and had confronted them, they had truly seemed less angry than resigned. There hadn't even been any serious argument when she claimed David was already under her protection and implied that he was acting on her behalf.

  They did make certain he saw every single one of them, though, and they took a great deal of glee in his obvious fear. It was probably the first time he had Seen something not of the physical world, but of the Medicine world, at least as an adult. It had obviously come as quite a shock. And she had to admit, she had taken just as much enjoyment in his fear as the Little People had.

  Maybe they knew that; maybe that was why they hadn't given he
r much of a fight.

  So now he was a believer-in the Little People, at least. And she thought he might have seen her two spirit-echoes as well, her Medicine Woman-self and her Kestrel-self. The way he kept giving her strange looks when he thought she wasn't watching was proof enough that he had seen something odd about her.

  Grandfather had hinted obliquely at something of the kind, and David had gotten a queasy look. David hadn't wanted to believe. He was one of those for whom the old legends were wonderful, but hardly applicable to modern times.

  Odd. She should have been the one with that attitude. She was the one living in the Heavy Eyebrows' world, making her living their way. She was the one who actually fit into that world, at least outwardly. He was the activist, the rebel, who wanted at least a partial return to the Old Ways.

  But that wasn't the oddest thing she'd had to deal with lately. On the face of it, she was as contrary as Mooncrow....

  At least David's experiences had made him a lot more tractable when it came to persuading him that there was a lot more going on with this situation than what appeared on the surface.

  After talking with him for four hours, she had to concede that he had changed some over the years. He wasn't as much of a chauvinistic brat as he had been. He wasn't as narrow-minded as she'd assumed, either. He still wasn't going to I win the Nobel Peace Prize by any means, but he wasn't as bad as he had been; he could compromise; he could be flexible when he chose.

  He might even be a useful ally in this mess. He could go places she couldn't, and Calligan's men were already talking to him. She could get information back to them. He could be very useful, really.

  She grimaced into the darkness. Face it, Jennie, you want more than an ally. You really didn 't want to send him off to his motel tonight.. . not when there's a nice bed in here, quite big enough for two.

  Well, she had wanted to send him away, and at the same time, she hadn't. She had-because it gave her a lot of satisfaction to prove to him that not only was he not the hot stud he thought he was, but she could resist his blandishments with ridiculous ease. As good-looking as he was, he probably had no problem getting all the women he wanted. He wasn't used to being turned down, particularly not by a woman he thought was already "broke to his saddle." The brief look of incredulous shock as she closed the door had been worth it.