Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  But there was some other curative power that sage possessed—and an urgent reason for finding it—she felt positive. Her duty as Plant Tender for the hataalii meant she must remember what it was before her time between the four sacred mountains completely ran out.

  It had been five days since the Wolf incident, but Tory hadn’t had five minutes to consider the ramifications and possibilities of the Skinwalker story. She and Ben had been treating a rash of summer colds, babies with ear infections and an amazing array of sprained ankles and various work-related cuts and scrapes.

  Even now, as she and Ben sought frantically to help a young girl who was having an asthma attack, her mind wandered. She wanted a second to check her e-mail for word on cancer cures coming out of a Navajo drug-research lab.

  During every odd break in the action since that day in the canyon, she would dash back to Ben’s office to use his online computer. She’d contacted friends—and friends of friends—anyone who might have some information about the apparently secret lab on the rez.

  Over the last few days, Ben’s illness appeared to have reached a tentative plateau. In daylight he saw well enough to get around and to treat patients without them guessing he was losing his eyesight. But after sundown he always fell into a deep hole of total blackness where he couldn’t see a thing.

  In an effort to make his nights pass more quickly, Shirley Nez had brought over plant lists and maps by the armful so Tory and Ben could work together on her studies. And so Tory would not have to leave him when he needed her the most. He would think of a particular plant and she would recite its uses and its last known whereabouts in Dinetah.

  It seemed like a game, one only a hataalii could play. And soon they both looked forward to their time alone after dinner.

  But Tory also dreaded those quiet times. Worried each night about the unfamiliar warmth and companionship they shared. And secretly hated that they continued to retreat to separate rooms when it came time to sleep.

  She’d tried so hard to be careful with her heart. The lust and love she felt for Ben had been packed away—well, at least it was kept out of sight.

  Yet every time she heard his deep laugh or listened to him praise her efforts with the plant names, the heart of the child she’d once been pounded threateningly in her chest.

  The heart of that scared little girl—the one who had watched her daddy die and seen her safety net go down on the living-room floor in front of her eyes—longed for an opportunity to find a cure for Ben as she wasn’t able to for her father. Her head hurt from memorizing plants and cures. But with every new plant, a tiny niggle of hope sprouted in her chest.

  By now she had completely accepted the concept of alternative cures. So many of them worked for Ben’s patients. And these last few days on the computer she’d read enough about new rediscoveries of ancient plant cures from the rain forests and deserts of the world that she had become a true disciple of the possibilities.

  So, during the day she stayed busy and during the night she learned to recognize the Plant Clan while keeping Ben’s spirits up at the same time. Even the earliest hours of prelight were filled, as Ben said dawn chants and she sneaked out to his garden to check on the plants and water them.

  Most of the nights when she fell into bed, she immediately dropped into a black, dreamless sleep. But last night she’d dreamed that dream again. The one of Ben carrying her up the side of a cliff while something horrible chased at their heels.

  She’d originally thought that dream was a warning about the landslide they had survived. Now she wondered if its meaning had more to do with the yellow, gleaming eyes and sharp fangs of the wolf that had been after them.

  Just the idea of a real Navajo Wolf made her shiver in the heat of the examining room.

  Ben had the AC off, trying to help the asthmatic girl’s breathing by using both a nebulizer the girl didn’t like and by running an old-fashioned vaporizer filled with a special concoction he’d made using plant remedies.

  While Tory administered drug therapies by injection, Ben kept up a steady chant and searched through his dried herbs and leaves for other possible cures to add to his breathing treatment.

  “Ah,” he mumbled absently when he found a bottle of some dried plant way in the back of one of his herb shelves. “I remember. Son of a…”

  Tory looked over at him for clarification of what he’d meant by that. But he gave her a slight shake of the head, as if to say he didn’t want to talk about it in front of the patient and her frightened mother.

  He turned to the child and smiled, in that gentle, authoritative way he had. “I have the exact right thing to cure the dark wind that has seized you,” he told her.

  Adding the dried leaves to the vaporizer’s water, Ben’s whole body held such an air of competence that even Tory was breathing easier. And in just a few minutes, so was the little girl.

  It didn’t much matter whether the drugs, the vaporizer or Ben’s supreme confidence had turned the tide. The emergency was over for now.

  While the mother thanked Ben, the little girl giggled and Tory searched out medicines and inhalers for them to take home with them, her treacherous heart failed her.

  She loved him—damn it.

  More and more with every passing minute. There was no cure, no white man’s drug nor Navajo remedy for the disease that ailed her. What in heaven’s name would she do when her contract on the rez was complete and they sent her away?

  Willing the pain back into the hidden box in her heart where she tried to keep it buried, Tory filled out the patient’s charts and cleaned up the examining room. She zipped back to the computer and checked her e-mail while Ben saw the mother and daughter off in their old pickup truck.

  Ten minutes later Tory opened the outside door and pushed back the blanket to find Ben sitting quietly on the bench beside the entryway. “Are you okay? How’s your vision?”

  “Still blurry, but I can see well enough,” he replied. “Sit with me a moment?”

  She sat beside him, but was careful not to let their bodies touch. It was difficult being this close and not being able to throw her arms around him.

  “Before,” he began. “When I found the bottle of dried Leaf Scar to help that child’s breathing, the old rumors and speculations came back to me with unfortunate clarity.”

  “What? Why unfortunate?”

  “I remembered my great-grandfather, who was a very well-respected medicine man, giving me lessons on plant remedies and the Dine Way when I was a boy. He told me of a rumor that had been spread off the reservation by some city Navajos that a cure for lung cancer was secretly being kept from the rest of the world by the eldest hataaliis.”

  “Lung cancer? Wow. Was it true?”

  “No, certainly not. The Dine would not deliberately keep such a boon to world health a secret. But…”

  “But?”

  “Changing Woman gifted the People with many special blessings. Some of them are only meant to be used on the land between the four sacred mountains—the land of the Dine. A few of the more complex cures you have been studying should not be shared openly off the reservation.”

  “Why not? If they work here, won’t they work everywhere?”

  “Perhaps. But the problem is that many of the plants will not grow anywhere else. And synthesizing them has proven for the most part impossible. It’s been tried. All the so-called experts succeeded in doing was to ruin our plant habitat and bring false hopes to suffering people.

  “That’s what happened to the Leaf Scar,” he continued. “Why it has retreated to hide in difficult-to-reach, remote places in Dinetah. It was the main ingredient in this supposed lung cancer cure.”

  “And now, someone has once again brought up the rumor and is stealing the few remaining plants?”

  He nodded. “Looks that way.”

  Tory tried to absorb what he’d told her. She understood about dashed hopes and had learned early in her life about charlatans.

  “Well, that mig
ht help us,” she finally managed to say. “Now we know it’s supposedly a lung cancer drug treatment and we know the lab is probably not legitimate. All I have to do is put that bug in the right ear and I should start getting a lot of information.”

  “No.”

  “Huh? I thought you wanted my help.”

  “I changed my mind. It could be dangerous for you. Think again of how much money must be involved. And now that I’ve remembered what happened the last time, I also remember my grandfather telling me that the hataaliis of the day had gone to great lengths to hush up the rumors. They wiped out any trace of anything to do with those false cures.”

  “So someone else has dug up the information somehow and is smart enough and devious enough to use it. How could that be dangerous for me?”

  “That someone has to be a person with connections on the rez. Old connections. And perhaps…” He let his thought drag out until, with a shake of his head, he began again. “The Brotherhood will take over from here. Let them handle it.”

  The Brotherhood again. Why did the whole idea of such an organization suddenly sound strange to her? Even with all the safety promises, slogans and lectures she’d gotten about them, the group’s image just reeked of vigilantism.

  At that precise moment, Kody Long’s truck pulled up the drive to Ben’s office. More than vigilantes, there was a kind of mysticism that swirled around these guys. It was as if you could just think the name Brotherhood and they would show up. Weird.

  “Ya’at’eeh,” Kody said as he stepped from the truck.

  “Ya’at’eeh, cousin,” Ben responded.

  Tory waved a limp-wristed hand, totally unimpressed by the ritual this afternoon.

  She did have enough sense to wait until some of the normal pleasantries were completed before she jumped feet first into her questions.

  “Do you have any news for us?” she demanded of Kody when there was a lull. “The last we heard, the Brotherhood was rounding up the bad guys and were trying to figure out who the ‘hotshot medicine dude’ might be. Oh, and have the FBI or the police got Coach Singleton in custody yet?”

  Kody stood before them, hands on hips, and gave her a wry grin. “You’re tougher than the Bureau’s best interrogators, Doc.

  “There is some news,” he continued, growing more sober. “But things are not happening as quickly as any of us would like. We’ve managed to locate all but a couple of the teens who belonged to that cult. They are going through deprogramming as we speak. But Coach Singleton has eluded us so far, and no one has been able to identify the supposed ‘hotshot medicine dude,’ either.”

  Kody turned his head slightly to address Ben. “Are your eyes seeing light or dark today, cuz?”

  “I have unfortunately become accustomed to hazy yellow in the afternoons. Why?”

  “We got a tip that Coach Singleton has had some kind of dealings with the Plant Clan thieves. And that he may be hiding out in a cabin up near the Tocito Wash area. We’d like for you to go with us as we check out the rumor. Is that a possibility today?”

  Tory wanted to be heard before Ben answered. “It sounds dangerous. Why do you need Ben?”

  Kody tried to hide a deepening grin. “Your mentor has developed a sort of sixth sense. We have a young man in our custody who claims he was never under the influence of the drugs but knows a lot about the cult. He promised to guide us to the cabin. But we would prefer not walking into a trap, so we hoped that Ben could listen and dig out any falsehoods in the boy’s statements.”

  “Lucas Tso is much better than I am at such things,” Ben broke in.

  “Our cousin the artist has temporarily left the sacred lands. He’s preparing for a grand art exhibit in Sante Fe next week.”

  “Hmm,” Ben muttered. “I don’t like the idea of leaving….”

  “If I can go along to help Ben get around then it should be okay,” Tory broke in to agree graciously.

  “No,” both men said as one.

  “I’ve asked Shirley Nez to come by here this afternoon and stay the night with you,” Kody told her. “The Brotherhood is capable of helping Ben with his movements. And we’ll all feel much less stress if we can be sure you’re safe at home.”

  “But—”

  Ben reached over and took her hands with both of his. “Do not worry, tigress. Your cub will return safe and sound.” He squeezed her hands with a firm but gentle grip. “I’m grateful that you’re concerned about my welfare. But don’t be. I have to learn to do these sorts of things for myself, Tory. You won’t always be around to guide my way.”

  Oh, hell. He would have to go and say something like that. Irritation, despair, and a silent longing so deep it seemed to come from childhood all conspired to keep her quiet and to reluctantly accept his decision.

  Fine. She would stay here with Shirley this evening. But she would be damned if she was going to stay off the Internet. She had decided it was her duty to find out everything she possibly could about the phony research lab.

  It was the least she could do to help.

  “How is married life, and are things okay with your new wife?” Ben couldn’t turn his thoughts away from Tory, so he tried to make small talk with Kody as they drove through the magenta sunset to meet the Brotherhood near Tocito Wash.

  “Reagan’s fine, thanks,” Kody said with a smile. “Growing big as a house with our child and irritated as hell that she’s stuck more and more inside by the computer.”

  “She’s decided she likes it here in Dinetah? I know when Reagan first came she had some reservations—Uh…no pun intended.”

  Kody barked out a laugh and downshifted to take the next grade. “It wasn’t Dinetah that concerned her. When Reagan first showed up on the rez, she didn’t know a soul and had never spent much time outdoors. Top that off with the fact that Skinwalkers were trying to control her mind, and no one could blame her for ‘having reservations.’”

  Ben let the grin spread over his face as he appreciated his cousin’s Navajo-style wry humor. Then he sat back and tried to enjoy the view. There might not be many more times when he would be able to see a sunset over the cliffs and mesas of his homeland.

  But he knew there were questions he should be asking, difficult questions. “Tell me what you were hiding from Tory back there. What do we know?”

  “See? You are getting as good at this as Lucas Tso.”

  Ben crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that.”

  Kody nodded sharply and his eyes narrowed. “We’re positive now that Coach Singleton has joined the Skinwalkers. One of the cult recruits we rescued swears he saw the man turn himself into a bird and fly away.”

  “Was it a raven, by any chance?”

  Shrugging, Kody went on, “Kid was too damned scared to notice. Not sure he would’ve been able to determine the species, anyway. You know these kids are more into video games and cool clothes than they are the old Dine Ways that their parents took for granted.”

  “So, the Brotherhood has concluded then that the plant thieves are probably Skinwalkers, too,” Ben remarked. “I’ve remembered an old story my grandfather told about the Leaf Scar being used by a Skinwalker to deal a public blow against the hataaliis back in the fifties. Someone swore to the white medical establishment that Leaf Scar cured lung cancer and that the medicine men had known it but refused to share the knowledge with the world.”

  “You think this new Skinwalker society is using the same old scam?”

  “The same scam, different group, different reason. From what I’ve seen, this new incarnation of Skinwalkers is all about money. And they are much smarter and more widespread than any of their previous generations of evil.

  “I don’t think they feel terribly threatened by the hataaliis,” Ben continued. “Because these particular evil ones are out to control the world, not just superstitious Navajos.”

  Ben took a breath and qualified his own statement. “The Brotherhood may be a somewhat diffe
rent story for the Skinwalkers than the elder hataaliis are, as we’ve actually slowed this group down on occasion. But still, I’m guessing what the Skinwalkers want the most is more money. Probably provided by the wealthy world drug manufacturers this time.”

  Kody nodded. “Now that we have a direction, Reagan can locate the ‘who’ and the ‘where.’”

  “Tell your wife to do nothing that would lead anyone back to her. It could be extremely dangerous.”

  “Reagan? You’re kidding. You know she can get any information whenever she wants about whoever she wants. And without a soul ever knowing who was looking for the info. My FBI superiors would love to be able to get into as many secure places as she does without a warrant. Reagan has…uh…her ways…and her contacts.” Kody chuckled.

  Ben would’ve smiled but the situation was too serious. “What else have you not yet said? Have we narrowed the list in order to find the person in medicine we’ve heard about?”

  “Some,” Kody answered. “Reagan has discovered dozens, maybe hundreds, of e-mail messages coming and going from the Raven Wash Clinic. She hasn’t been able to hack into all of the messages yet, but a couple of them were sent out by someone calling themselves ‘the Raven.’”

  “Raven Wash,” Ben muttered absently. “That still leaves several possible suspects. There’s maybe half a dozen guys there that could be called ‘that medicine dude.’”

  “Judging by the sheer volume of messages,” Kody told him, “I’d say that the person we seek must have pretty unlimited access to the computer system there. That should help narrow it down at least a little.”

  Just who the Raven might be was something for Ben to consider as they continued driving along Navajo Route 9 to meet up with the other members of the Brotherhood. Maybe tonight they would be able to capture one of the Skinwalkers and then make him tell what he knew of the rest of the society.

  If Ben hadn’t been so occupied with thoughts of Tory, however, he would’ve known better than to yearn for something he knew deep down was totally impossible.