Winter Prey

by T. M. Simmons

  She stepped away to distance herself from his comfort attempts. A corner of her mind — the one filled with years of training — told her the flare-up was a sign her PTSD wasn't completely under control yet: a sudden anger outburst for no apparent reason. An easily lost temper. Irritability. Her thoughts had twisted Caleb's words, and her underlying psychological weakness had fostered the irrationality.

  One reason she had entered counseling — even eventually resigned her commission — was that, in her condition, she couldn't continue to maintain the expectations of the military. Live up to the failure is not an option demand placed on her, when she feared she would disintegrate for no reason other than someone glanced at her the wrong way.

  The main reason, though — always the main reason — was Risa and motherhood.

  Still, the anger felt good now. It chased away the emotional distance the meds had fostered. Gave her a new strength.

  Hopefully — dare she even silently voice this? — maybe the anger was healthy anger, a sign of her inner psyche healing. A rational anger. Maybe she should accept it as a positive sign rather than weakness. A sign that she was truly on the road to recovery, as she had been feeling a few minutes ago, before the outburst. A sign she could be the mother she wanted to be for Risa, a woman her daughter could admire when compared to the woman who had died so soon after giving birth to her.

  When Caleb reached for her again, she moved back further. "I apologize," she said as she lifted a hand to forestall him. "And you're wrong about me being strong. I've got a long ways to go yet, but I'm determined to get there. You're the one who's facing this situation with courage. I can't imagine how hard it must be, after what happened. But I'm still shaky enough that I do need to leave, at least for a while. I'm not going AWOL, just falling back to regroup. To see my daughter. My injured friend. To find out what my mother is hiding from us."

  "Stay safe," he said with a nod. "Stay in touch."

  "I will. And promise you'll let me know exactly what's going on here, not hide anything. If we want to defeat this thing this time — and have no doubt, I am going to stay involved, even from a distance, so I do mean 'we' — I'll need to know realistically what it's up to."

  "You have my promise," Caleb assured her.

  She gave in to something else tugging at her and leaned forward for a brief kiss. He didn't try to touch her, only returned the kiss in a soft, welcome caress. Then she strode around the truck. At her SUV, she ordered her mother, "Scoot over. I'll drive."

  Chapter 30

  Niona stoically refused to reveal her secret on the three-hour ride back to Duluth. She kept Kymbria from badgering her by promising they would talk as soon as they could sit down somewhere, and only after they knew Keoman's condition.

  First, though, Kymbria needed to check on Risa — hold her daughter for a few moments. But when they pulled into her brother Pete's house, they found it empty. A call on the cell phone revealed they had taken their young children and Risa to a birthday party for a friend in a neighboring town. Pete's wife Cyndi apologized profusely and offered to return immediately. Burying her longing, Kymbria urged her sister-in-law to enjoy the party, said tomorrow morning would be soon enough to see Risa.

  At St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth twenty minutes later, the nurse stopped them at the ICU door. "This is a restricted area. Are you family of one of our patients?"

  Kymbria lied through her teeth. "I'm Keoman Thunderwood's sister." This white woman would believe her. Knowing the regulations of an intensive care unit, Kymbria had deliberately heightened her Native American characteristics, pulling her hair back into a braid and slipping a beaded necklace around her throat. "I just got here after a long drive. I need to see him."

  The nurse glanced over Kymbria's shoulder at Niona.

  "This is his aunt," Kymbria explained, not a true lie. Blood relationships weren't vital for kinship in their tribe.

  "You'll still have to wait," the nurse said in a consoling voice. "He's been in surgery, and the doctor is with him right now."

  Kymbria tamped down her impatience and irritation. How many times had she herself turned away worried relatives?

  "I understand," she agreed. "Will you ask the doctor to stop in and talk to us when he's done? We'll be in the waiting room."

  The nurse nodded and closed the heavy door. Kymbria stared through the tiny, screen-covered window, but a dark tint overlay it. Niona stroked Kymbria's arm to get her attention, then grasped her hand to lead her into the waiting room. No other grieving people sat there at the moment, although empty cardboard coffee cups and scattered newspapers bespoke earlier occupants. Kymbria shuddered slightly. The grief and suffering lingered, part of the air. Nothing could ever erase the atmosphere of waiting, hoping, praying that permeated rooms such as this. Not even the joy when relatives were informed someone had passed the crisis and would be moved to a bed on another floor for further recovery.

  Kymbria picked up a strewn newspaper from a chair as Niona sat in the adjacent one. She folded the paper into a neat, precise layer and smoothed the wrinkles. After the long drive, she didn't really want to sit. No, she told herself realistically. She didn't want to face the fact that once in the chair, time would slow to a further crawl, the words sealing Keoman's fate looming like a dark cloud around her.

  "The nurse said he came through the surgery," Niona said. "That's good, isn't it?"

  "Yes," she assured her mother, palm continuing to stroke the newspaper. "That's good. He made it as far as ICU."

  "How long do you think it will be before the doctor will come talk to us?"

  Despite the fact she knew her mother was chattering inanely to keep her mind occupied from direr thoughts, Kymbria couldn't dredge up any impatience. "I don't know, Mom. Probably not long. Do you want to go get coffee?"

  "No. No, we might miss the doctor. And there's no one else here for Keoman."

  Kymbria laid the newspaper down carefully on an end table. Someone else might need it later, to distract herself from slowly passing time. "He doesn't have anyone else, does he? He was…is…Adam's only child. I'd have thought the tribe would send someone down here."

  "I told Gagewin I was coming. That I'd let them know how he was."

  "I see. You're doing this part of it, leaving them to hunt that damned windigo. Which you refused to discuss on our trip down here, putting me off with the promise you'd tell me more after we got the hell out of the area. Well, we're out of there now, Mom. It's time for you to make good on your promise."

  Niona drew a deep breath and clasped her hands in her lap, intermingling her fingers in a grasp so tight Kymbria started to instinctively reach for her before she strained a muscle or even broke a bone. But she drew back, waiting, hoping Niona would finally talk. The whoosh of the pneumatic door interrupted them. Kymbria kept her eyes on Niona's face, unsurprised at the relief in her mother's eyes as she stared past Kymbria. A second later, a short, balding man in a blood-spattered green operating gown entered the waiting room.

  "Miss Thunderwood?" he asked when Niona stood.

  "No, but I'm Keoman's aunt," Niona said.

  Kymbria rose behind her mother, her nursing instincts alive as she prepared herself to support her mother if the news was bad. "Please. How is he?"

  "I won't lie to you," the doctor said. "He's got several broken ribs, a multitude of chest injuries. But the worst is what you may already suspect. His neck was broken in the crash. And there are head injuries. If he'd only been wearing his seatbelt…."

  "How bad, Doctor?" Kymbria broke in. "Is there spinal damage? Brain trauma?"

  His brows lifted in inquiry.

  "I'm an RN," she explained. "I recently returned from Afghanistan."

  "Then you've seen some bad sh…stuff," the doctor said. "And you'll understand when I say I'm not making any promises. The next forty-eight hours are vital. We've got the neck stabilized, but yes, there was some damage to the spinal cord. And yes, there's brain trauma, which you're aware is more life-t
hreatening than the spinal damage. We've relieved some of the pressure, but that can be deceiving. The brain might continue to swell, or our efforts might have been enough. Right now, he's in a coma. When…if…he comes out of that, we'll find out if the spinal damage will heal or…."

  "Whether there's some permanent paralysis," Kymbria said.

  Beside her, Niona gasped and Kymbria grabbed her mother as she wavered. She pushed Niona down in the chair and knelt before her, taking her hands. "Mom? Maybe you should wait here while I look in on Keoman."

  Niona closed her eyes, and Kymbria gazed back at the doctor. "You will let me see him, won't you?"

  "Of course," he replied, then continued with a shrug, "but you know he won't be aware of you. And only one of you is allowed access for five minutes each hour."

  "We can't be sure he won't know we're there," Kymbria disagreed as she rose.

  "Some people do believe that," he acknowledged. "Still, you know the rules."

  "You have my word, we won't break any rules," Kymbria assured him, although she was already preparing to break the one about only relatives being allowed into ICU.

  "Leave your contact information at the nursing station," the doctor said as he left.

  Kymbria steeled herself and followed him. At the doorway, she glanced back at Niona. Her mother sat shrunken in the chair, eyes closed and lips moving soundlessly in evident prayer. Such a tiny figure. She actually appeared smaller than when she came to be with Kymbria several months ago, as though age or stress had eaten away at her.

  So many questions troubled Kymbria. Yes, Niona was worried about Keoman. He had been part of their family even before his father died. Close friends with her brother Pete, a companion and another big brother to her. Niona mothered and disciplined him as one of her own.

  The same nurse opened the ICU door. "The doctor said you can visit for a few minutes," she told Kymbria. "But we're getting ready for reports, and no one will be allowed in then."

  Kymbria hurried forward and entered the ICU. As many times as she'd been in similar units, she had never grown used to them: the hushed atmosphere, the silence broken only by quiet mechanical sounds versus human ones. Not even groans of pain. Patients here were, for the most part, too injured to realize how dangerous their situations were, how slim their odds of survival. Could hardly even complain about their treatment, although ICU nurses were among the most compassionate in the entire profession.

  Two patients lay on the left in open areas; no walled rooms here to interfere with keeping close visual and audible contact with the critically ill. On her right lay Keoman. The sight of him shocked even her professional senses. Nearly every mechanical purveyance she had ever seen — and had training to use herself — strived to maintain a spark of life.

  He wore a "halo," a device that echoed medieval torture implements. Screws in his forehead, and in the back of his head, held the four steel bars in place. Steel bars ran down to the chest pad around his upper body. The device prevented movement in his spinal column, kept it from shifting and causing more damage. A surgical bandage on the front of his neck told her the surgeon had gone in from that direction for his exploration and repair, perhaps installed metal plates inside to further prevent movement.

  Wires ran to other machines, a heart monitor, a ventilator helping circulate oxygen through his body and damaged nerves. Two IV bags hung on poles, one for a saline solution, one for antibiotics to thwart infection. His normally bronze-hued skin was ghastly pale beneath the multitude of bruises and neatly-stitched cuts on his face.

  She approached him with firm steps, already falling into her nurse mode, certain beyond doubt that, even unconscious, Keoman could sense her presence, her mental attitude. Too many times she'd seen soldiers thought beyond help respond to her nurses' positive mental ploys.

  "Hey, there," she said in a calm voice as she reached for the limp hand that lay on top of the sheet. "It's Kymbria. But you know that. You know my voice. Mom's here, too. And the whole tribe is pulling for you. So when you get ready — when you're done wandering wherever you are, when you feel revived enough — come on back to us. We'll be waiting."

  Perhaps she imagined it, probably she did, given his dire injuries…still, she squeezed back on the nearly negligible response to her words, that flicker of muscle movement in his large, callused hand. Maybe it was only a hand muscle twitching reflexively. Maybe it was a sign he hadn't wandered too far down the path to the spiritual world to want to come home. She would keep positive thoughts.

  "I know it hasn't been five minutes," the nurse said as she came up beside Kymbria. "But we don't want him disturbed more than we can help right now."

  "I understand," Kymbria replied.

  They needed to leave, anyway. With her brother not home, she had left Scarlet in the SUV, windows rolled partly down and the vehicle parked in a corner of the lot. She didn't want to leave the dog too long, however.

  She smoothed Keoman's forehead, careful to keep her touch light against the dark purple bruises. Then she leaned down and brushed her lips on his cheek. "I'll be back soon, dear friend. Say hello to Adam if you run across him. But listen if he tells you it's not your time to join him, that you've still got some things to do here with us. Monsters to slay."

  His fingers didn't respond this time, so Kymbria slid her hand free, still hoping he'd heard her. Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned the windigo, but it was the reason Keoman lay here now. He would want revenge, as she did.

  She dialed her sister-in-law's cell phone as soon as she emerged from the hospital, to get directions to where the party was taking place. She couldn't wait until tomorrow to see Risa. Despite her exhaustion from the stressful day and the long drive, she wanted to hold her daughter. See her brown eyes dance with joy. Feel her chubby arms around her, her tiny nose nuzzle against her neck.

  Chapter 31

  Caleb rubbed his gritty eyes. Spots and letters danced in the darkness behind his closed lids. Beside him, Nodinens chuckled, and when he glanced at her, the elderly woman looked as fresh and ready for more genealogical work as she had hours ago. Her brown eyes sparkled, not a sign of the redness he could feel in his showing.

  "I enjoy this," she said. "It has been part of my life's path ever since I listened to stories from the Elders." Then a frown marred her features. "If only it were not for such a dire reason."

  "You've already done the major work," Caleb reminded her. "All we've been doing is adding a ‘sort’ feature to the clans. And you've got a hell of…uh…heck of a computer here."

  "I buy a new one each year out of my tribal allotment. When I first tried to learn to use one of these things, more than once I would have tossed it through my window. If I had been able to pick up the darned thing. Earlier ones were so heavy. Now, I cannot imagine living without one. Besides, the typing is good exercise, to keep the arthritis in my fingers at bay."

  "You could probably have done the work as easily as I could."

  "We needed both of us," she denied. "You for the typing, me to wrack my recollections to trace the Marten Clan members back through our history."

  Caleb sighed. "I'm not sure it will do any good."

  "And why not, son?"

  "Nothing. I…."

  "Speak, Caleb McCoy. We are all working together here. Anything might help us defeat the windigo this time, no matter how minor one of us thinks a thought might be."

  Caleb rose from the chair and massaged his lower back with his fingers. The chair was set for Nodinens' smaller figure, and he'd been in a crouched position for several hours, too polite to adjust the height. His back was paying for it now. His bladder also made itself known, but one look at Nodinens' stern countenance told him he better answer her rather than visit the bathroom.

  "It's just that…well, no matter how hyperaware people are, they aren't going to be able to stop this creature if it chooses them for its next victim. It's supernatural. Its powers can't be thwarted by our human abilities."

  "Yet you and
Kymbria kept it at bay," she reminded him. "And you gave Jimmy and his sister a charm. Plus the thing wasn't able to approach you at the wreck. Whatever protections you and Keoman had between you probably saved Keoman's life. That…evil son of a bitch would have counted a Midé from the Marten Clan as a…a huge coup, as our ancestors would have called it."

  "I don't have enough blessed protections for everyone in the Marten Clan."

  "We have our own protections. Even now, Gagewin is making sure everyone who needs one, has one."

  She studied him as Caleb turned to stare out the window into the darkness beyond her small house. Only his drawn face reflected back.

  "What is it, son? You are withholding another thought that should be freed."

  Caleb bit his lip, then faced her. "I'm just wondering how this damn thing will react if everyone it chooses as its next prey is wearing a protection that keeps it away."

  He saw the acknowledgement of his words dawn in her brown eyes. Then she firmed her lips and stood. "We will worry about that when necessary. Now, I need to feed you. And you can stay here tonight. The couch makes into a bed. There is no sense in going back to that cabin with no utilities."

  "Kymbria won't mind if I use their cabin," he assured her.

  "Well, if you'd rather. But I will admit, I would not mind having you here tonight."

  He hesitated, not really wanting to put her out. But he didn't really covet being alone that night himself, either. Kymbria's cabin was as isolated as his rental, and damn it, he couldn't erase the vision he'd faced at the wreck. Even during his intensive concentration the past few hours, it had lingered in his mind. Gigantic, at least eight feet, maybe nine. Matted hair clumped on the massive body. Dangling arms, claw-tipped fingers digging into the body dangling in its arms. The smell, one he imagined would accompany death itself. Worse even than the odor when he ran across a bloated, half-eaten elk carcass left under a deadfall in the summer until the puma or grizzly decided to return for a new meal.