by Vella Munn
And then death had visited them.
Had Loka been part of that? She’d asked him if he’d been among those who’d attacked her ancestor and he’d told her no. She’d believed him, but what about here at what was now known as the Thomas-Wright Battlefield? Was that what had put her on edge—the memory or soul of a soldier searching for a peaceful resting place?
So many things assaulted her senses and emotions. She felt as if her entire being had been rubbed raw. She was sensitive, so damn sensitive to what had happened back then. She didn’t want it this way, didn’t want to think about resting men being stalked by relentless braves.
Damn you, Loka. Damn you for being part of this slaughter!
“You do not understand.”
A tidal wave of emotion slammed into her, spun her around. She stared up at Loka, not in shock but fascination. That he’d been able to approach her without her knowing didn’t surprise her. After all, this land was his, and he was as at home here as any rabbit or antelope. “What don’t I understand?” she mouthed as he stepped over a rock. She ached inside, an ache more all consuming than anything she’d ever experienced. She felt starved, a breath away from death. If he didn’t touch her—
“Why we did what we did here.”
The realization that he alone knew what had compelled the Modocs to commit an act that they must have known would be avenged gave her something other than him and the raw sensuality that was him to enter her mind. “Why, Loka?” she whispered and dropped cross-legged to the ground. He stood over her, a living wall of a man full of challenge and promise. “The Maklaks killed General Canby, but the soldiers kept coming. Surely you didn’t believe that killing a few men here would save you.”
“You do not understand,” he repeated.
She wanted him to sit beside her, but he remained on his feet, dominated her with his size and the power in his voice.
“Have you ever watched a doe with a fawn? If her fawn is being hunted by a predator, she will tell her fawn to run. She will lead the way, pacing herself to her baby’s strength. It is not a doe’s way to fight—her legs are swift because Kumookumts created her to run. But if a wolf overtakes her fawn, she will turn and fight. We were like that doe.”
“But you weren’t trapped. You could have gone on running.”
“Where? How long?”
He asked his questions so softly that for a moment they didn’t register. She looked around, thinking to point at the distant hills, but before she could, full realization sank in. “You’re saying—you’re saying that your children were like that fawn, aren’t you? They couldn’t run anymore.”
“And some of our women and the old people.” He lowered himself to the ground, the movement more graceful than anything she’d ever seen in her life. He sat opposite her on the hard, rapidly heating earth. Morning sunlight caressed his flesh, glistened off his chest and shoulders. An image of her hands gliding slowly, reverently over his flesh settled inside her and refused to leave. She wanted to concentrate on what he was saying. Damn it, it was vital to her understanding of him. But she could barely think around him, not when he looked the way he did. When she reacted the way she did.
“They were exhausted?” she finally thought to ask. “But they hadn’t been on the run that long.”
“No.” The muscles around his mouth tightened and then relaxed. In his eyes, she saw the effort that took. “Not running. But we were a proud people. We built good homes, strong homes to keep us warm through the winter. It was not our way to burrow into caves like bears. To spend moons living underground like frightened animals—” Again his jaw clenched. “We could no longer go to the sacred butte for our spirit quests. The new ways—the things we had been doing since the white men came—they had brought us heartache. We wanted back the old ways, to be close to Kumookumts again, to feel Bear and Wolf’s wisdom, but how could we be as we once were if we were not free to live on the land our creator had given us?”
She had no answer for him, or maybe the truth was, she understood him with a depth she didn’t believe possible. Yes, they were weary of being trapped at the stronghold, of what must have been a Spartan diet. But it had been more than that. “You had always felt yourselves a part of the land. And now that was being denied you.”
He’d been staring at the ground, his eyes unfocused. When he looked up at her now, she saw something she hadn’t seen in him before. Was it possible that he trusted her? That she’d said something that resonated deep inside him?
Wanting that, praying for that, how could she not believe in him?
“I met a man this morning,” she whispered, not sure what, if anything, she could say. “A Modoc. He said the same thing, that an Indian’s belief is part of who and what he is. That the land and sky are as essential to who he is as his strength or intelligence. I don’t think I ever understood that before.”
“And now you do?”
“I’m trying.” He might disappear. If she said the wrong thing, he might evaporate like the morning mist. She didn’t think she could bear it if that happened. “You’re making it possible.”
A darkness that seemed to originate from deep inside him slid slowly over his features. She watched in fascination and fear, desire for him lapping through her body, her mind even. She needed to feel his arms around her as much as she needed air in her lungs, and yet it wasn’t for her to make the first move. “Please,” she whispered. “What are you thinking?”
“How long it has been since I have spoken to anyone.”
Desperate to stem the tears that threatened to engulf her, she breathed in deeply. This was his air. He knew its smell as intimately as he knew the land around him. He was sharing it with her this morning, and her gratitude knew no bounds. “What was it like?” she asked. “When you first woke up, what was it like?”
“Sorrow.”
Sorrow. “Loka, please.” She held out her hand but let it drop without touching him, because if she did, she would be lost. “Tell me everything. Please. You aren’t alone. I’m here—you can talk to me. What was it like? You saw what had happened to the land and—”
“No!” He straightened, his eyes so fierce that she thought only of him and the eagle she’d seen yesterday. “It was more than that. So much more.”
“I don’t understand. I want to understand.”
Although he remained silent, she sensed that she’d said something dangerous, something he didn’t want to hear.
Fascinated in the way of a bird staring into the eyes of a stalking cat, she watched as he reached for his knife and pulled it free. When he held it up for her to see, the sun briefly kissed it. He leaned forward, challenging her with his body. Somehow she found the courage not to move; or maybe the truth was, she would never be able to pull herself free from him. The knife came closer, an extension of him, keen and ancient, both artifact and weapon. She knew what it was like to be incapable of movement. To have her life held in another’s grip.
“Loka,” she whispered. “I can’t give you back what you had before I arrived. I wish I could.” That wasn’t the truth. She would never want him to return to the slumber that had been his existence. “I believe in you. It’s insane. There’s no way you could possibly be who and what you are and yet—”
“Cho-ocks.”
The shaman who’d given him whatever it was he’d taken so he wouldn’t have to leave his son. She wanted to tell him that that was impossible, remind him that the shaman’s red rope hadn’t prevented the army from storming the stronghold, but Loka stood as living proof of Cho-ocks’s power, didn’t he? Maybe—no!
“You should not have come out here this morning. Surely you knew I would find you.”
She hadn’t known, but she had hoped. “Maybe that’s why I came.”
He still held his knife in his competent fingers. Looking at the strength in his arm, she had no doubt that her life would end in a single movement if he so desired. But if he’d come here to kill her, he would have already done it—ended
whatever it was that existed between them.
“I sensed—” Barely moving, she indicated the barren ground around them. “As I approached, I sensed the presence, maybe it was the ghosts of the soldiers who’d died here. I felt their fear and pain.”
“Yes.”
Yes. With that single word, he was acknowledging that something brutal had happened on this site. She wanted to leave it like that, to place the burden of the massacre on the Modocs, but she couldn’t. “Loka, if it was in my power to give the Modocs back their land, I’d do it. I’d have already done it.”
He blinked, said nothing, his essence a living curtain around her.
“But we both know that isn’t possible. I want—” No, she couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t lay herself naked and vulnerable before him. If only she could stop shaking, stop thinking about what could be between them.
As if her hand no longer belonged to her, she watched it reach out to touch his chest. The day had just begun to heat up, but she could already feel its warmth in his flesh. Maybe, she thought, the warmth came from inside him. He was alive then, alive and here. With her.
Made weak by the thought, she increased the pressure on his chest until his beating heart seemed just out of reach. She looked up into the eyes of this man who couldn’t possibly exist and yet did. He stared down at her, his emotions unfathomable. It seemed to her as if the world had slowed down, maybe stopped entirely for them. She wanted to run her fingers over every inch of him because maybe then she would understand. Instead, she continued the fragile contact and let her eyes speak for her.
The breeze eased over his flesh, ruffled his long, glossy hair, spoke of unsettled souls and regret, said something about promise and tomorrow. She felt on the verge of tears and yet far beyond that, as if what was happening between them eclipsed any emotion she’d ever known. Life itself seemed to hang suspended between them, waiting—waiting for her to understand.
She heard a sound, dismissed it because only he mattered. But when she saw the look of utter concentration in his eyes, she forced herself to listen. The howl seemed to ride on the wind and yet control it at the same time. She’d seen so many emotions in Loka’s eyes. They were by far the most expressive part of his expressive body. He’d become almost childlike in his fascination, a boy-man hearing something essential to his existence.
Again the howl touched her nerve endings, the impact more intense this time. “Wolf,” she said, unaware that she’d been going to speak until she heard her voice. “That’s a wolf.” But it was impossible because wolves had been extinct from this part of the country for decades.
“Wash.”
“Wash,” she repeated, wondering if that was Modoc for wolf.
“Wash, the trickster coyote. Maybe she…” His voice trailed off when the haunting note again rode the windways to them. “No,” he muttered. “Not Wash.”
A wolf, then? Was that what he was saying? Fighting his continued impact on her senses, she scrambled to her knees. He stood, held out his hand and she took it. He effortlessly helped her to her feet and she waited beside him, feeling proud, feeling part of him and the land he commanded.
“I want it to be like this again,” she managed around the great lump in her throat. “For it to be the time of the wolf. If there was any way I could make that happen…” She wanted, needed to say more, but nothing sorted itself out inside her. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Loka and looked out into the distance with him. He smelled of the desert, pungent sage, heated lava rock, clean, mountain tainted wind. Until this moment, the rational, logical part of her had continued to disbelieve his existence. He couldn’t possibly be who and what he was. He couldn’t! But his scent changed that.
That and the wolf call.
Belief as solid and clean as what she now felt toward him seeped into his features, solidified and became something beautiful. He had no doubt about Wolf’s existence, not a lean, gray predator that had somehow eluded man’s rifles, but a spirit-creature unhampered by the rules that dictated her existence.
Wolf was like Loka, an essence in and of itself.
He hadn’t moved a muscle since helping her stand, and she understood his desire to absorb and comprehend what was happening. But she needed more from him. She wanted to take his knife and tell him that there was no need for him to carry a weapon on this peaceful morning, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. If someone, anyone, learned the truth about him, he might be in danger.
That thought, more than her body’s need, propelled her into action. Lacing her fingers through his, she brought his hand up to cover her breast. The instant she did, a lightninglike shock surged through her. She swayed, unable to hide her reaction. Instantly he stopped listening for Wolf and focused on her. Questions, and a desire that rivaled hers, imprinted themselves on his features, tested her self-control as it had never been tested. “Do you feel my heart beating?” she asked when she could force herself to speak.
He nodded, the gesture languid as if aware that his power over her had no limit. “Fast and strong. Like that of a doe who senses a buck.”
A doe who senses a buck. She loved the image his words conjured up in her mind. She indeed felt like a deer being approached by a magnificent stag. But if she allowed the image to continue, she would have no more control over her fate than a small bird caught in a fierce wind. Struggling to remember what she’d had in mind when she’d thought to touch him, she sucked in a deep breath and placed her hand over his hard chest. For a moment she felt nothing, then the beat-beat of his heart pulsed through her fingertips and seeped into her nerves, her brain, her entire being.
“I can feel your heart beating, Loka.” It was so damnable hard to speak, to remember why she’d felt she needed to say anything. If he reached for her, she would lay herself open to him. Surrender everything to him. “Your—your heart. That tells me you’re alive. Real.”
“You did not believe I was?”
He struck her as being a mix of innocence and power, the most incredible man she’d ever met, and the most dangerous. But sometimes a person had to look danger in the eye if she was ever going to fully experience life. “I never—Loka?” She had made her point. There was no longer a need to touch him. Still, she couldn’t possibly bring herself to break the contact. “When you first woke up, you must have thought this couldn’t possibly be happening.”
“Yes,” he said softly, and she wondered at the hell he must have gone through before accepting that he’d been thrust into a time not of his making.
“That’s the way I’ve been feeling. Ever since that first day…” His heart pulse was so powerful. It seemed capable of beating forever, of transcending laws of the flesh that mortals had to obey. Capable of capturing her and keeping her with him forever. “That first day when you showed yourself to me—I didn’t want to believe in you.”
“Why not?”
“Because your existence goes against everything I’ve ever believed, against all logic. I told myself—never mind what I tried to convince myself of. It doesn’t matter anymore because—because I believe in you.”
She waited, hoping he would say something, but he only looked down at her with eyes that were a mix of pantherlike strength and ageless wisdom. He lifted his hand from her chest, but before she could think how she might survive the loss, he slipped his knife back in its sheath, caught both her wrists and pulled her within an inch of his body. He held her there, challenging her. She couldn’t think beyond his nearly naked body, her need to explore and possess and be possessed by that perfect body.
He hadn’t touched a woman for well over a hundred years. Yes, he’d been neither alive nor dead during that time, but somewhere deep within him must have been awareness. And he’d been awake for over six months. Awake and alone. A primitive man who knew nothing of today’s moral codes.
Who needed.
Frightened by the realization that he might think nothing of taking her, frightened even more by the fact that her body didn’t give a damn how t
hey came together, she remained where she was, waiting.
He pulled her closer, his strength both relentless and gentle. The fear that had been flickering inside her gave way to a much more powerful emotion. She thought, briefly, of what the wolf’s howl must mean. After that, there was nothing except him. She felt as if she were standing above a simmering volcano. At any time, the mass of power and heat would burst free and she’d be consumed by it.
As long as he controlled the volcano, was the volcano, she didn’t care.
“I do not want you here,” he whispered hoarsely as her breasts pressed against him and his arm around her back held her firmly in place. “You should have left me in peace.”
“I know. But, Loka, it’s too late.”
“Too late.” He bent his body over hers. She tried to concentrate on something, anything else, but there was only him. “What does this mean?” he whispered. “You and me together. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
It didn’t matter that he said nothing in return. He was so close that his features had blurred, leaving her to think only of his heat and strength, his control over her. Her primitive need for him. She knew she shouldn’t risk losing what little self-control remained, and she drew her wrists out of his grasp. But instead of stepping away from the danger, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down toward her, covered his mouth with hers. He jerked back but only slightly, only briefly. He seemed to hang there, allowing her to do with him what she pleased. Insane, she thought as she parted her mouth and touched the tip of her tongue to his lips. Insane.
“Loka…”
“What?”
“I need to understand.”
She waited for him to ask what she meant by that, but he didn’t. Instead, he pushed her away, leaving her lonely and yet grateful for this small step back into sanity. When he tensed and cocked his head, she thought he’d heard someone approaching. Fear for him surged through her.
Then she heard the wolf howl again.