Winter Prey

by T. M. Simmons

  "Rick," she said more emphatically, "my husband…one of the things we first talked about when we realized we were falling in love was whether or not we wanted children. Rick grew up an only child, and…well, his family life wasn't the greatest. He said he would prefer we build a life of our own, without children. And that was even before I told him I was barren."

  Nodinens waited silently for Kymbria to continue. Kymbria allowed a few pleasant memories to filter through her mind: Their honeymoon in Hawaii. Lazy evenings together, nights of lovemaking that both satisfied and thrilled. Passion so hot, the only thing to make it better would be pregnancy.

  She'd never quite been able to come to terms with her barrenness….

  She'd never admitted during her own brief weeks of counseling that perhaps the lack of her own child in her life had nagged her. Perhaps thwarted the completeness of her relationship with Rick. Perhaps…sent him to Marie.

  "Rick had an affair," she told Nodinens. "I'm fairly certain this was the only time he was unfaithful to me. I think I would have known." She cleared her throat and continued in a staccato manner, "She was a member of his team. She got pregnant. Rick asked me for a divorce. Since we were both overseas, in a combat zone, the paperwork had to wait."

  "Then you agreed to the divorce?" Nodinens asked.

  "After a miserable fight," Kymbria said. "Well, several miserable, accusing fights. Then Rick got shot. There was a firefight near our field hospital. I saw him go down. I…still cared for him. But when his men got him to the hospital, I could tell he'd rather have had…her with him."

  Nodinens frowned. "I do not recall Amber telling me your husband died in a battle."

  "He didn't," Kymbria assured her. "But he was hurt horribly, shot in the stomach — through a defective bullet-proof vest. They airlifted him to the Armed Forces hospital in Germany. Did surgery. He was actually recovering when…when he contracted a staph infection. The infection is what killed him."

  Images flashed in her mind, accompanied by surfacing emotions. The high hospital bed where Rick lay, evading eye contact with her. The fluctuations between throbbing anger at his deceit and deep longing for the love they had shared in those early years. Smells. The clean, sharp odor of laundered sheets against a backdrop of the lemon-scented cleaning fluid the housekeepers used in their mop water. The faint putrid scent of Rick's body near the last, already decaying with the infection.

  In defense, she took a deep breath of the crisp, clear air around her and stared across the snow to where Amber's husband had planted a line of blue-green spruce for a windbreak. Not even the bone-biting cold could run off all the birds in this beautiful land. She watched several tiny gray and black titmice dive-bomb a fat piece of suet Amber had hung in a nearby oak, which would be leafed out beautifully in the summer. A coal-black raven emerged from a distant spruce and foolishly tried to grab a share of the suet. The titmice banded together and attacked the larger bird, sending it squawking off in fear.

  A smile actually touched Kymbria's lips, quickly dissipating when Nodinens spoke.

  "That is not all, is it? The woman? The baby?"

  "I…oh, damn it, Grandmother! I kept telling myself she probably got pregnant deliberately. So Rick would divorce me and marry her. But…she was on leave, because she was about to give birth. She found out about Rick. Hell, he probably called her as soon as he was able. She flew to Germany. I walked in…well, started to walk in one day, but froze in the doorway. She was there, and Rick had his head on her belly, talking to the baby. I could tell from his words they already knew it was a girl. And when he looked up at her, it was the same expression he'd had on his face when we were first married. He loved her and her baby, Grandmother. Then…."

  "Go on, Child. You need to get this out. It had to have been hard on you to actually see this."

  "It might be better if I hadn't," Kymbria said grudgingly. "Then I could have kept imagining her as some bimbo with big tits."

  Nodinens laughed softly. "I understand. My husband was faithful to me, at least, I believe so. Yet sometimes I tell myself this was because I kept a close eye on him and once in a while would help him sharpen our cleaning knives."

  "Oh, Grandmother, thank you for that," Kymbria said with a bubble of laughter.

  "Tell me the rest, Child."

  Kymbria gritted her teeth. Part of what she had to tell curdled her stomach with shame at herself. "I couldn't help myself. I checked her out through a sympathetic friend I had in Rick's unit. She wasn't a bimbo. She had a rep as a strong woman, one of the best-trained soldiers my friend had ever worked with. Her name was Marie Winston. She was blond, that lovely, silky white-blond hair that has to be natural. And yeah, she did have big tits. Bigger than mine, anyway. She joined Rick's unit nearly three years before we were sent to Afghanistan. Even now, I'm not sure when it started, how long it went on."

  She took a deep breath to prepare herself for the final part of the story. "Rick didn't last long after he contracted the staph infection. Only two days. The first day, they told me he wasn't going to make it. I never left his side after that. She never got a chance to say her own goodbye. And I'll admit, that gave me a nasty amount of satisfaction. Kept me there without even a break for coffee. But then I found out she couldn't have come anyway. She went into labor. The baby girl was born there in the German hospital. An hour after Rick died."

  "You keep speaking of her in the past tense," Nodinens pointed out.

  Kymbria clenched her hands inside her heavy mittens. The answer to that would be revealed as she told the rest of it.

  "I went home immediately, leaving them to take care of transporting Rick's body. But I was already experiencing post traumatic stress episodes. Jitteriness. Flashes of temper and eruptions of actual rage out of the blue. I'd decided I needed to contact a counselor myself as soon as I got Stateside. I asked my mother to meet me at Bethesda. We had made our own arrangements for Rick’s burial, and since his parents had died during our marriage, there was no one to protest. I was still his legal wife. I figured I'd look into counseling after the funeral, and Mom agreed to stay with me for a while, if that was what I ended up doing."

  Kymbria glanced at Nodinens, expecting to see a frown at how long it was taking her to tell her tale, how many details it seemed she had to add for explanation. Only patience shown on the elderly woman's face. She lowered her voice to finish.

  "Marie and the baby came back on the plane with his body. The plane lost an engine about fifty miles from New York and crash landed. There was an oil carrier nearby. They rescued the baby and about a hundred other passengers. But they said she was already dead. When the plane went down, it took her body and Rick's coffin with it."

  "The baby you have adopted is the one rescued from the plane."

  "Risa. I couldn't help myself. I went to the New York hospital to see her. My mother went with me. We found there was no one on her mother's side to take her. She would have gone into foster care, or to an adoptive family praying for a newborn."

  "You did right, Child."

  "I kept my PTSD symptoms under wraps until I had everything done paperwork-wise to adopt Risa," Kymbria said. "It turned out that, since she was my husband's child — he'd already claimed paternity — I had a legal right to Risa. And I love her with my entire being, Grandmother. As does my mother. When the PTSD continued to worsen, I went into counseling there in Bethesda as much for Risa as for myself. But the Army chose the wrong psychiatrist to help me."

  "Child, you did the right thing coming here. There is much suffering in your life right now. It will take you some time to overcome all this. Sitting beside the man you still loved while he died is a terrible thing to experience."

  "I did still love him," Kymbria agreed. "I was hoping we could get some marriage counseling. Work things out."

  "Then you have the knowledge of his unfaithfulness, the fact he fathered a child with this woman. Yes, you need to take time and talk things out. "

  "I need to get myself
back on the right path, so I can be the best mother I can for my daughter. I can tell you without a doubt I love her more than life. I never care about her parentage."

  "You need to decide what is best for you, not others, Child. Not even your daughter. You need to find out what will make you feel right inside for the rest of your days. If you follow that path, then it is the best one, the one that will also benefit those around you, including your daughter. And there will only be one path. So consider it with deep care."

  Kymbria hesitated and again breathed in the beauty around her while she let Nodinens's words flow over her. It made sense. She had to do this for herself, not just her daughter. That would be best for both of them.

  "I will remember," she assured Nodinens. She glanced at the door again, but before she could turn away, Nodinens lifted a hand and gently grasped her chin.

  "You must also face something else," Nodinens told her. "You may have been drawn home by your need for your people and your Midé, but also by your path in life. Your destiny."

  For a brief second, she thought of Caleb. But his image was immediately covered up by a huge evil entity with the smell of death about it. A howl filled with nuances that fostered fear. Words that whispered through her mind, each time becoming clearer and more adamant.

  With an effort she dredged up from deep within, she managed a small smile at Nodinens. "I'll have to put off my own considerations for a while. This monster has come into my life on top of everything else."

  Nodinens reached out and held her arm when Kymbria turned toward the path to the door. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Do you believe the windigo has some tie to you?"

  "No. Oh, no," Kymbria denied. "Not a tie. It's just…well, it's been at my cabin. That's where it left L…the maintenance man. And Keoman and I heard it outside the sweat lodge the other night. He never admitted that's what it was, but I know. It made that same howl out on the lake when it left Len's body."

  "You should not speak his name," Nodinens reminded her, then went on before Kymbria could apologize, "but tell me what you heard in this howl."

  "Why should that matter? I just heard it howl. A horrible howl, definitely not human."

  Nodinens made no move to start her snowmobile and leave. She pulled out another cigarette, lit it and stared at Kymbria without speaking, clearly waiting. The last thing on earth she wanted to do right now was re-live the feelings she had when the beast was near. Nodinens wasn't leaving, though, until she got an answer. She took another deep drag on the cigarette, her eyes never wavering, silently demanding Kymbria respect her and share the information she wasn't even admitting to herself.

  "All right. It…it was a horrible sound. Mean and cruel. It sliced through a person like a sharp knife, and my skin crawled. When it came to the cabin to leave L — the body, it scared my dog, Scarlet, too. Scared her so badly she curled up in a ball rather than bark and defy it like she usually does when she thinks something might be even a slight danger to me."

  Nodinens flicked cigarette ashes into the snow and waited.

  "Damn…darn it, Grandmother. It also had some sort of deep sadness in its voice. And no, I have no idea why I felt that. It's a monster, an evil beast. It kills people. Eats them! It doesn't deserve anyone's pity!"

  "You are right about that, Child. If this thing even senses pity in someone, it will laugh at them. That will make its evil even stronger. But never have I heard anyone say this about the windigo. That it carried some sadness with it. There is something different about this season's hunt. I think we need to understand what it is."

  "Why? It's just on its usual rampage, killing people so it can feed on them."

  "Perhaps not. Perhaps it is like the sheriff says. He has studied human monsters. He says they sometimes grow careless with their kills. Or escalate for some reason."

  "Caleb insists we not put human emotions into the windigo. He says it will be a huge mistake to do that while we fight it."

  "He has his reasons. Keoman told us about his wife and child. That is why Gagewin has agreed to let this man join us this season. Still, I am starting to believe we need to understand this thing better before we can kill it. All we have done before has not been successful. It just keeps waking and killing, sleeping and waking and killing more."

  Kymbria dropped her gaze, but Nodinens cleared her throat and cast her a stern frown when she glanced back up.

  "Do not hide things now, Child. They might be important."

  She drew in a steadying breath. "When the windigo is around, I think I hear it trying to talk to me. But it's very possible it's a PTSD symptom instead. That happens a lot to those of us suffering from this."

  "What does it say?" Nodinens demanded.

  "As near as I can translate from the Old Language," Kymbria admitted, "it's saying Come. Or sometimes, Come now."

  "Great Spirit," Nodinens whispered.

  Kymbria bit her lip, and Nodinens caught the gesture. "What is it?" she insisted.

  "Maybe you should talk to my mother. I think she knows more than she's saying."

  "Niona has told you this?"

  "No. That's the problem. She won't tell me anything. She just keeps insisting I need to leave. In fact, she drove up yesterday to get me."

  A vehicle approached, and both of them looked down the driveway at Kymbria's black SUV.

  "Listen to me," Nodinens said. "You must make your mother tell you whatever she is hiding. If she will not, tell her that I will tell the Council and they will demand it."

  "I will," Kymbria agreed. "I think you're right. Whatever she's concealing is important."

  When Niona pulled in behind George's truck, Kymbria could hear Scarlet yapping. The setter had her shining head close to the windshield, her nose leaving spots on the glass. Niona reached over and opened the passenger door, and Scarlet bounded out and up to Kymbria.

  Kymbria knelt and gratefully hugged her dog into her arms. She laid her cheek against the silky fur on Scarlet's ruff and met her mother's eyes through the SUV windshield. Niona appeared reluctant to join them, moving her gaze back and forth between her daughter and the elderly tribal grandmother.

  Around them, none of the beauty of the scenery had changed. The sun emerged from a gray cloud, shooting dazzling diamonds across the pristine snow. Yet evil had infiltrated this beauty, unimaginable evil. Evil that had been covered up for centuries. Or, if not covered up, at least denied after it abated.

  And — Kymbria searched out her mother's gaze again, but Niona was gathering something from the seat before she opened the driver's door.

  Was what her mother was hiding actually fostering the evil? How could they force her to tell them? Or were they wrong? Was Niona only trying to force Kymbria to return to her daughter and the new life she was building in Duluth?

  Chapter 25

  It circled the woman, who lay unmoving, her body blue-tinged and chilled to the point of near death. Blood still flowed, though, since she continued to breathe. Slow breaths, shallow and sporadic, but It well knew how deep the survival instinct ran in humans. It remembered what had driven It to fill the emptiness of the stomach, to deter the waiting void.

  Remembered as though only last season….

  The snow, like none other, blew down on them from the north. The unceasing snow and wind. Frigid cold. Days passing, hand-made shelters ineffective. A gap of a day or so, a break in the despair, then another violent storm. No supplies left, since the group, set on vengeance, traveled light in order to journey quickly and surprise the evil-doers. They could eat from the plentiful game along the way…so they thought.

  Its responsibility in the existence before this one. It led them into that, against the cautions of the Elders.

  When the one-after-another blizzards ended, no animals stirred, no source of food surfaced. Travel was impossible. Drifts higher than their heads piled the land. The surface would not hold. They floundered and dug through piles of snow in search of scarce wood for the tiny fire started by striking biwunu
g against ickodekan. At last they fed the flames miserly with their weapons, the mitigwab and asawans, the bindawun in which they carried the asawans.

  More days passed. Another week.

  One by one Its companions succumbed to akosiwin. No one versed in the ways of the muckiki traveled with them, and none of them knew the healing ways.

  Finally, left alone, no choice remained. Survival instinct overcame moral teachings.

  It remembered that first bite of food so many eons ago. Frozen, hard to hack with the knife. The relief and guilt when the meat melted in the mouth. Strength that eventually flowed back into muscles weakened to the point where the desire to survive was only a faint glimmer, yet a glimmer still.

  It never uncovered the heads, the faces. Never dealt with the source of the food. No reason. It knew where each companion lay, where he had fallen.

  Now It squatted beside her, the latest of a long line of prey taken during the many waking periods. Experiences from what had gone before foretold not only how and when the hunger would grow, but when the prey must be consumed. The first one was only sustenance for waking, fuel for the powers to free themselves from dormancy. The next meal — the one that would truly put the powers back at full force — would be this one. The warm blood would finalize the return of both the reasoning power and the physical movements necessary for escape if pursuit ensued.

  The initial burgeoning was always plenty for the beginning of the season. Yet after that crucial hunt during that first waking many years ago, It had learned how much more the body that now imprisoned Its spirit was capable of.

  It reached out a claw and prodded the woman. After a moment, she moaned softly. She was beyond the shivering she had gone through for hours.

  It raked a claw down the front of her, slicing the rest of her clothing free, careful not to touch the skin…yet. Her eyes fluttered slightly, then opened sluggishly. She stared down at her exposed body and somehow dredged up the energy to gasp in horror, stiffen and try to lunge away.