~~~
Typical man. Caleb fell asleep moments after their final shattering orgasms. At least he hadn't smoked a cigarette, she mused with a smile. The smile widened as she realized now she could examine the body that had given her unparalleled pleasure, as he had studied hers moments earlier. Only his feet were entangled in the sheet. Somehow during their lovemaking, one of them had tossed the spread to the floor.
She stared at his face, where only fine sun-wrinkles marred his skin now, rather than the deep creases of concern and worry usually found there. Surprisingly long, dark lashes lay on cheeks flushed with traces of passion. A nice, straight nose above full lips, the top and bottom ones the same size. Her fingertip flicked toward his mouth, but she forestalled it. She didn't want him to wake yet.
As she'd already gleaned, his body was firm and muscular, arms nicely toned but not overblown from body-building. Light blond hair covered his chest, darkening in a path down his flat stomach to the apex of his thighs, darker yet around his penis. Long legs to match his height, hard thighs, more light body hair.
She moved her leg and caught the sheet with a toe, dragging it off his feet. Slender and narrow, he obviously took care of his nails, as he did the rest of himself.
She brushed her messy hair behind one ear and started to sit up. His arm whipped around her waist. "Where are you going?"
She lifted an eyebrow as she met his shuttered gaze. "Windigo chasing?" she teased.
He groaned and lay back on the pillow, pulling her with him until her head settled in the crook of his neck. "Let's don't even tease about that, sweetheart." Then, after a brief hesitation, he continued, "You were teasing, right?"
She snuggled her cheek against his shoulder. "Unfortunately," she replied quietly, "I'm not. Although I'm agreeable to us trying to figure out how to make it less dangerous."
When he didn't respond, she reluctantly pulled away from him. As she shifted to face him, he turned his head on the pillow, never releasing his grasp on her waist. His eyes drifted downward.
"If we're going to talk about this," he said gruffly, "you'll have to cover up those enticing breasts. Otherwise, my mouth can find better things to do."
She laughed and drew the sheet over her. "Better?"
"Not really," he admitted. "But it'll have to do."
He turned to face her, their breaths intermingling a second before he kissed her. When his fingers inched towards the top of the sheet, she laughed and slapped his hand away.
"O.K.," he said, a pout in his voice. "But I'd rather talk about what just happened. It was…well, shattering is the only word I can come up with."
She stared at him for a brief second, then gave in with a tiny sigh and traced a fingertip around his lips. "Me, too."
He glanced away, a shy grin on his lips. "A man always wonders…."
With a giggle, she drew his face back, but quickly sobered. "It's always different between different people. And you're wondering how you compared to my husband."
A brief nod of acknowledgement was her answer.
"It was good between us," she admitted. "At least, for several years. It wasn't the sex…the lovemaking…that hurt our relationship. We…looking back — and I've done a hell of a lot of that the last few months — I guess we both just changed."
She shook her head. "Just. What an inadequate word. But…what's that old saw? Grew apart? That's what we did. And he found someone whose life path matched something he hadn't even realized he was missing."
"Must have hurt."
"It did. It nearly broke me, along with him dying in my arms before we got a chance to rationally talk things out. Mostly my fault, I guess, since I wouldn't make the effort."
"Ah, sweetheart. I didn't know that part of it, how he died. No wonder you developed PTSD."
"I had a long talk with Nodinens about it a couple days ago. That, with some serious thinking I've been forced to do, brought me to some realizations. I doubt it would have helped our marriage even if Rick had survived. But it might have made our parting a little easier."
She smoothed a finger down his cheek. "And you also need to know something else, Caleb McCoy. What just happened between us was, as you say, shattering. But I've got a lot of things to take care of in my life, so I'm not ready for anything lasting right now."
"So I'm just a one-night stand?" The teasing glint in his eyes took the sting out of his words, and before she could counter, he went on, "That may be what you think right now, Kymbria James. But something happened to me while I was chasing after you and Scarlet. So I'm not giving up on this."
"You know what?" she said after a moment's reflection. "Neither am I. There are a couple other things you should know, though."
"Yeah," he interrupted. "We have to go after this windigo, and it's possible neither one of us will survive."
"That…and this," she said. "Remember when I mentioned you wouldn't have to use birth control?"
"Vaguely," he answered with a sexy chuckle and eyes slowly drifting towards new desire as he traced a finger beneath one of her breasts.
She pushed his hand away, but with a smile. "This is important. I…I'm barren, from a childhood injury. Marie — my deceased husband's lover — is Risa's mother."
He lifted an eyebrow in inquiry, as though waiting for more explanation. She didn't have anything else to say, though.
"And that matters to how I feel about you why?" he finally asked.
She smiled in relief and pleasure. Until she'd actually said the words, she hadn't understood how much she cared about Caleb's reaction to that information. "I'm still not making any firm decision until this is over with. Which brings us to…what do we do next about the windigo?"
Caleb dropped a kiss on her nose, then swung out of bed. "I have to make a phone call. Think you could get some coffee going?"
She gaped at him until he had his jeans on and looked over at her. "What?"
"I get to do the women's work, huh? Make coffee, while you make plans."
He laughed and shook his head. "I can make the coffee before I call Daniel, if you want."
"No, no," she said with a wave of her hand. She sat up on the bed, then stood, intentionally allowing the sheet to drop from one breast. "I'll do the coffee. You've got an important phone call to make."
"Not that important."
Chapter 39
Recalling how long it had been since she'd eaten — at the tribal headquarters the day before at noon — Kymbria mixed up a banana and orange salad and fixed some sandwiches to go with the coffee while Caleb finally made his phone call an hour later. The murmurs and lulls of his conversation in the living room accompanied her preparations. Eventually, she had everything on the table. Still, Caleb hadn't appeared. She found him at the front window, gazing out at a saffron and maroon sunset over the frozen, snow-packed lake.
"It's beautiful…" she began, and he jerked around with a start. "Oh, sorry. I just wanted to tell you the food's on the table."
"No, I'm sorry," he said. "I was lost in thought. Didn't hear you come in here. You're right, the sunset's really nice. I wasn't paying attention to it. And yeah, I'm starved. Glad you unbent enough to do some women's work."
But no smile accompanied his joking comment, and she read confusion in his body language and green eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Is the coffee done, too?" he asked instead of answering.
She nodded and led the way back into the kitchen without prodding him further. She even poured them both coffee before she sat at the table across from him. Caleb had his fork in hand, toying with the fruit salad, ignoring the sandwich. She pushed his coffee cup over to him, and he immediately picked it up.
Kymbria leaned her chin on her clasped hands and said, "I never hid what my mother said to me from you. I told you as soon as I knew myself."
Not all of it, but as much as she'd felt comfortable saying. Now that they'd made love, though, she needed to tell him everything.
He leaned back in his chair, coffee
cup gripped tightly. Tenseness radiated from him as she waited for him to speak. Finally, he drew in a breath.
"I called Daniel Goodman back in Colorado, the man who's my best friend and also the head of our paranormal investigation group. I wanted to talk to him about this situation and another investigation he'd told me about a while back. Before I could get into that, Daniel said he'd been getting ready to call me. He handles my personal and business finances, too, and he's a computer whiz."
Caleb swallowed coffee, then put his cup down, his gaze on it as though delaying what he had to say. Finally, he continued, "Daniel said that someone had tried to access one of my accounts. But since Daniel changes the passwords a couple times a week, for protection and to thwart identity theft, all the attempted access did was trigger some sort of computer alarm Daniel set up."
Kymbria frowned. "Who would try to do something like that? Some identity thief?"
"He doesn't think it's an identity thief. He's got too many safeguards in place for that ever to happen to his or my funds. He said the attempt originated out in California. And the person used an out-dated password that had once been on the account." Caleb shrugged. "I can't recall knowing anyone in California well enough for them to understand my finances. And there's nothing I can do from this end. Daniel's handling it. He just wanted to make me aware, and give me the new passwords he's already put into place." He frowned. "Something keeps bothering me, though. It's one of those things that's on the edge of your mind, but you can't pull it out. You know?"
"I know."
He shook his head, as though giving up on that part of the puzzle. "The other thing I talked to him about — the reason I called him — was a story he told me about an investigation he'd been on before he and I met. It had to do with an entity — a ghost, I guess, although she evolved into more of a demonic entity — that was out for revenge."
Kymbria voiced the first thought that came to mind. "Like I'm beginning to believe this windigo is, after I heard Mom's story," she said, then pushed her sandwich plate aside and leaned forward in interest. "What happened?"
"You've heard about the young girl beside the road? There's a ghost story like that in every state. She's always dressed in a party dress, and it's raining. When someone stops, she asks for a ride home, but when they get to her house, she's not in the car."
"And if I recall correctly, when the driver of the car goes up to the house to check, the girl he picked up has been dead for years."
"Out in Colorado a few years back, there was a story similar to this, but with a different ending. The girl appeared when it was snowing, while a young male, seventeen or eighteen, was driving alone and talking on his cell phone. 'Course the kid would tell whoever he was talking to about the girl, then pick her up. The kid would then disappear. When they finally found him later, out at a local lover's lane spot…well, each one's private parts had been cut off."
"The girl was killed during a rape," Kymbria deciphered.
"A gang rape. Daniel's son knew the male victims, went to school with them. The son actually pieced it together after three of the boys died. He'd heard rumors about the rape in school. You know how kids talk. The girl had been found dead in her car at the bottom of a mountain ravine. The car had caught fire, so there was nothing that suggested it was anything more than just a tragic accident. Even if DNA had been a viable tool then, the body was too far gone. Still, the rumors started a week or so after her burial."
"They raped and murdered her, then staged the accident," Kymbria said with a nod, repugnance for the boys and sympathy for the poor girl curling in her stomach. "She needed to be stopped. But how can you kill a ghost like that?"
"That's what Daniel wasn't sure about. See, Daniel's been a hunter for a long while, at least, when he was younger. He's pretty much retired now, a supervisory role. Burned out, leaving it to younger hunters. Daniel's father was a hunter. And when I use the word hunter here, it's in a context a lot different than just a bunch of people going out to see if a reported haunting is fiction or indeed fact. Daniel fought entities he felt needed killed…or re-killed."
"Was…was his son one….?"
"No, the son had nothing to do with the rape," Caleb denied. "And his son's not a hunter, either. But that's another tale. Anyway, while Daniel was trying to figure things out, she killed again. But his son said that kid wasn't one of those rumored to have done the rape. The latest kid was, though, known to be rough with girls. One ended up in the hospital after he beat her, lost her baby. This ghost…entity…was branching out. Going after more than just the boys who had raped her. Going after other boys who had mis-treated girls in some way."
"How horrible, even though it's rational. At least, probably in her mind."
"Daniel found out the name of the final kid, the one the entity hadn't gotten to yet. This kid had been on a trip with his parents and finally returned. Maybe that's why this entity killed another kid…filling in the time until she could get the one she wanted. Anyway, Daniel forced this kid into going with him to look for the girl. They found her, and Daniel hid in the back while the boy stopped his car and tried to get her in it."
"Tried?"
"Yeah," Caleb continued. "As I've mentioned, she had evolved. She sensed something wrong, although Daniel could tell with his own senses that she desperately wanted to get at this last rapist. And suddenly, he knew what she was going to do.
"The car was on a curve high on a mountain road, a cliff beside them. Enraged, she used her powers to lift the car and send it towards the other side of the road, intending to kill this last rapist that way. But Daniel managed to scramble out of the rear passenger door and confront her before she could send the car over the cliff. The kid was still in it, pinned by a seatbelt that wouldn't release…probably stuck on purpose by the ghost."
Caleb sipped from his coffee cup, then went on, "Daniel wasn't sure if what he had with him — a bucket of dirt from the girl's grave — would work or not, but it was the only thing he'd been able to think of. When she came at him, he threw the dirt on her. She screamed in fury, then burst into flames. The ashes mixed with the soil, and when it was all over, Daniel scooped everything up and returned it to the grave."
"And that was the last of her?"
"Yeah. And the kid's spending his days in a mental institution. He's catatonic, and they don't think he'll ever come out of it." Caleb paused and then went on softly, "That's what ended Daniel's hunter career. He knows the boy probably got what he deserved, but he's still filled with guilt over being a part of destroying the kid's sanity. Making him go along to confront this ghost. His guilt's compounded because no one knows that it was Daniel up on the mountain with the kid and the girl. He got out of there and walked cross-county back home, leaving the kid in the car on the edge of the cliff. He figured the kid would start the car up and drive home, keep his mouth shut because of the rape. But his parents found him the next morning, wandering the roads, vacant-eyed and uncommunicative."
Kymbria picked up her sandwich, but laid it back down. It didn't appeal to her at all right now, and neither did the fruit salad. Instead, she sipped her coffee.
"The windigo's targeting people who made its life miserable, who had a hand in killing the woman it loved," she said as she set the cup down.
"I'm starting to believe you're right," Caleb agreed. "But that still doesn't tell us how we can kill it. Even if we can find its lair. Maybe find the remains of Nimiwin?"
"I don't think that will work," Kymbria said. "I mean, if it's bent on revenge, it already knows about Nimiwin. Maybe even has Nimiwin's remains with it. Has had all these years. So I don't think that has anything to do with being able to kill it."
"Then I don't know what the hell to do. We can't go after this thing without any idea how to overcome it. We're just asking for it to add us to the dozens of people it's already eaten."
They couldn't do anything at night, and Kymbria stifled the guilt over Nodinens out in the bitter cold while she spent a pleasu
re-filled night with Caleb. Yet it would be suicidal to go after this evil entity with less than careful discussion and preparations. She shuddered at the thought of actually finding the lair where the bones of all those kills rested after the windigo devoured them. They had no choice. The beast would continue on down through the centuries if it wasn’t stopped.
Chapter 40
The next morning before dawn, they hitched the trailer to Caleb's truck, loaded the snowmobiles and drove to the start of their search.
Keoman's jeep was gone. A light layer of snow already covered the landscape scars, except for the deep splinter on the tree. That would either eventually heal or kill the age-old birch. Caleb halted his pickup and the trailer beside the road, then shut off the engine.
"Are you sure this is where we need to start?" he asked Kymbria.
She shrugged. "It's as good a place as any. It's the last place anyone saw the windigo. And despite the convoluted roads we had to travel, it's not that far from the lake, where it also appeared."
She retrieved the area map from the console between them and started to spread it on the dash. She paused and asked Caleb, "How sure are you the cross you wired to Scarlet's collar will protect her? I'm still really uneasy about leaving her at the cabin alone."
"I'm as positive as I can be. Remember, it's as much faith in the powers of the protections we use as it is the materials they're made of. The consecrations and blessings we call down from our various higher powers are additions to our faith in them and our own abilities."
"I should have taken Scarlet to a friend's to stay." Then she sighed. "But we've wasted enough time looking for Nodinens. She's frail. Elderly. How long can she last out here? How long…how long will this thing keep her alive before it kills her?"
"She's elderly," Caleb agreed. "But frail isn't a word I'd use for that spunky lady. If anyone can fight this thing for at least a while, I'd lay my money on Nodinens. You're right about us needing to find her soon, though."
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