by Liz D. Marx
“That’s a character in a movie, buddy. Try again.”
Foster was tired and aching all over; the last thing he needed was a pop-quiz right now. But his only other alternative was to disarm the lady, which could end up with one of them getting hurt—and Mason would never forgive him for that, even if he had come all the way over to Norman to save his sorry ass.
“Look, lady, my name is Foster. I’m Mason’s private investigator, and I have reasons to believe that he is in great danger.”
She huffed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
What the?
It was only then that the coin dropped.
Why was the center being guarded by a woman? Where were all the men in the complex?
Foster wasn’t a chauvinist, and knew squat about the hierarchical structure of the Caddo people, but he was well aware of the rivalry between farmers in these parts of the country. There was no way the leaders of this community would have left a woman—even if she were the best shooter in America—to guard the land by herself.
“What happened?” Foster demanded, his voice taking on a tone a few octaves lower.
The lady flinched but didn’t answer. “What do you want with Mason?”
He didn’t mean to start a fight or be disrespectful, but Foster’s patience had reached its limit. He grabbed the barrel of the rifle and shoved it aside, twisting it hard. As he expected, the woman lost her grip and let the trigger go without pulling it.
She stood there, paralyzed, probably still trying to grasp what had just happened.
Foster lowered the gun and put the safety on. “What’s your name?”
“Matilda.”
“Matilda, take me to your chief, now.”
She didn’t look happy, but complied.
The farm was bigger than Foster had expected, with vast crops of corn, a handful of cows and some horses. There was no one around. No children playing, no teacher telling kids off, no groundskeeper trimming the trees. Foster remembered Mason telling him that this cultural center/boarding school was running at capacity; so where the hell was everybody?
Matilda led him down the long dirt road and into a building with an extensive corridor and concrete floors. The gray walls were adorned with several children’s drawings. After passing by a few empty classrooms, she stopped in front of a door bearing a worn sign saying ‘Infirmary’. She gave it a light knock just before opening it.
Foster saw a handful of angry-looking faces sitting around a hospital stretcher where a bulky man laid upon it. The room wasn’t large and, apart from the narrow makeshift bed, it was furnished with a single cabinet half full of supplies and a small sink.
They all stood up as soon as they got a glimpse of the tall white man in the corridor.
A short guy with a wide nose took a few steps forward and talked to Matilda in some weird language—probably their native tongue. Foster couldn’t understand them, but by reading the man’s posture, his crinkled brow and barked words, he got the gist of it. They weren’t happy with his visit.
“My name is Foster,” he said interrupting whatever conversation they were having. “I’m looking for my friend, Mason Green.”
The man just sneered back.
“Who is your chief? I need to speak with him,” Foster tried again.
“What do you want with him?” another man, who was sitting by the small window, asked. Then his angry gaze shifted to Matilda.
“He refused to tell me,” she replied, as if trying to justify why she had brought Foster over.
“Look, Mason is in danger. If you don’t care about the health of your biggest benefactor, then think about all the green Benjamins you’re gonna stop receiving if he dies.”
“There’s no need to be rude, Mr. Foster.” The voice came from behind the protruded belly lying on the stretcher.
So, the SOB knew who he was.
“I’m Running Bison, the chief of this village. And Mason is no longer here,” the man said as he tried to sit up. Matilda ran to his aid when he failed to do so.
Running Bison had his head and right eye wrapped on a large bandage. A dark red blot stained the dressing. “Mason told me you might show up.”
“Nasty injury you got there, chief,” Foster said. No humor hinted in his voice. “Mind if I ask who did this to you?”
“A redhead devil with an angel’s face.”
Pamela. Damn it, he was too late.
“But don’t worry, she also missed Mason,” Running Bison said, probably sensing Foster’s stress.
The Caddoan leader motioned Foster to come in and sit down next to him. The other men clearly didn’t like it, but moved out of the way nonetheless.
“They’re taking the Binding Stone to its home,” Running Bison explained.
“Binding Stone?”
Foster was confused. He hadn’t spoken to Mason much after his encounter with the mysterious Miss Doyle, but his friend hadn’t mentioned anything about a stone.
With Matilda’s help, Running Bison filled Foster in with everything that had happened—Chloe’s magical relic, Pamela’s showing up uninvited, Johnny’s kidnapping and the tense moments when the chief got knocked out.
“How does this Johnny kid know where Mason is going?” Foster asked after a long pause was needed for the chief to catch his breath.
“Johnny is…special,” Matilda replied. “He has a way of knowing these things.”
One of the other men stood up from where he was sitting across the room and yelled something at Foster in that funny language of theirs. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a thank-you-for-your-concern.
Matilda barked something back. The guy puffed a few times but sat back down with his proverbial tail between his legs. Mason felt a twinge of admiration for the woman.
“Forgive us, Foster,” Running Bison said, settling back on the raised pillows Matilda had arranged for him. “We were discussing what we should do when you arrived.”
“What you should do? You should go after those bastards, that’s what,” Foster replied between clenched teeth. “I know I am.”
His words had the effect he was hoping for. The men in the room raised their heads, and hope filled their eyes. But no one spoke their minds.
“And do what, Mr. Foster?” Running Bison replied. “We are farmers, not fighters.”
“But we were warriors once,” Matilda reminded him.
“The cops won’t be of any help, Chief,” Foster pondered. “Pamela―the redhead devil you mentioned―may have even found Mason and Chloe by now.”
“We must go and help them,” Matilda added emphatically.
This time, the others in the room expressed their support through cheers and a few odd words foreign to Foster. They were obviously itching for action, hungry for revenge. Running Bison shook his head, but his eyes revealed the true thoughts in his mind.
After a tense silence, the chief nodded. “This is not going to be an easy task.”
The tribesmen cheered loudly at their chief’s agreement.
Foster’s hopes to bring Mason home safe and sound increased substantially as Matilda took him to the barn. The place was loaded with hidden firearms of all kinds. They were a little “vintage”, but the sheer numbers would make up for it.
“Farmers, not fighters, hmm?” he poked at Bison, who just shrugged mischievously in reply.
After that, Chief Bison made his choice from the many villagers who had volunteered that would accompany them on the mission. A few elderly men got offended when they were denied the honor—after all, they had many years of hunting experience under their belts—but Bison convinced them that their presence at the center, protecting the women and children, was more valuable. Foster took his hat off to the chief for having dealt with the elders’ objections with such finesse.
But his confidence in Bison shook slightly when he ordered the tribesmen to go get the horses.
Why were they going on horse when they had at least three trucks at their disposal?
> But upon seeing Forster’s frown, one of the guys explained that the national park was a dense forest where cars, even four-wheel-drives, would have a rough time going through. The horses would give them great advantage over Pamela’s men.
Fair enough, that sounded like a good way of winning ground against their enemy and, as it turned out, the guy with a wide nose who had yelled at Foster in the infirmary was a hell of a tracker and bet his left arm he could find Mason in less than a day.
Foster just hoped he could do it before Pamela did.
Chapter Twenty-One
The fire was taking a long time to catch hold. The storm that reached the area a couple of days ago had dampened the soil and most of the good sticks for firewood. After the third try, Mason finally managed to get it going.
His gaze darted across to Chloe. She was sitting on the ground, knees bent, arms wrapped around her middle, wide eyes focused on nothing. She was having a hard time taking it all in.
Well, what a surprise. Mason couldn’t understand it himself.
What the hell had happened in the woods?
One minute he was fighting for their lives, and the next, the world came to a halt and time stood still. Through his noo-hi’s eyes, he saw Chloe do the impossible—she manipulated the elements like a true goddess and vanquished their attackers as if they were nothing more than sandcastles. She had looked absolutely celestial with a blue aura surrounding her hour-glass figure; her features reflected a powerful somberness he hadn’t seen before.
But as soon as the magic dissipated and the stone went dark, Chloe freaked out. She started screaming and dropped the relic as if it were a black scorpion.
It had taken him the better part of an hour to calm her down, find them this makeshift shelter—below a large southern oak tree that looked like a giant mushroom—and get her to sit still.
He could only imagine the mental rollercoaster she was currently riding.
He was an old soul who had grown up surrounded by magic and the supernatural, but Chloe? She was a scientist, a scholar of facts, someone who lived to dissect the mysteries of the ancient tribes but had never embraced them as true.
Mason ran his hand through his hair and cursed the gods. He needed time to think of what to do next, but his stomach rumbled at that moment, yanking him from the existential debate he was having with himself, and dragged him back to the crude reality of the here and now. He was hungry; his body needed substance.
Going by Dai-mo’s position, it was late afternoon already. He had only a little piece of flat cornbread in the morning at the Caddo Center, and he’d bet that Chloe hadn’t eaten much either. He had to find them food, but there was no way he could leave her here by herself. She looked so vulnerable, so on-the-brink-of-the-precipice.
He had to find another way.
He slowly stood up and turned his back to Chloe. Faking a yawn, he opened his mouth and used the last ounces of energy to release his noo-hi. It flew away in its translucent form, with only its high-pitched cries conceding its existence.
When he felt it was far enough, Mason threw all his might into making the raven fully corporeal so that it could hunt on its own. It wasn’t an easy task to materialize one’s animal spirit, and it took a lot out of him, so he only did it in desperate times—like these.
Through his noo-hi’s eyes he spotted a small but chubby brown rabbit. It would have to do. In less than three minutes his bird returned with supper tight in its claws, and dropped the dead prey in front of Mason.
As soon as his raven landed gracefully by his side and returned to its ghostly form, Chloe’s numb gaze shifted to the bird. “A raven…” she said in a catatonic mumble, as if reciting words she had memorized from a book. “For some Native American communities, the raven means metamorphosis, change, transformation. They believe it sees what the physical eye can’t.” Then almost in the same breath, she added, “But this one is not real, is it?”
Damn. Mason hadn’t seen that coming.
Her stare turned from numb to terrified. “It can’t be real, because I can see through it. Oh, my gosh, Mason, I’m going crazy!” Chloe grabbed her knees firmly and started rocking back and forth.
May the gods damn his putrid soul for being so careless!
He thought she was too wrapped up in her own ghosts to notice his, but he was wrong. And now, she saw his noo-hi in action and thought it was just a figment of her supposedly crazy mind.
Mason sat back down by her side. “You’re not going crazy, Chloe.” He put his arm around her shoulders and held her tenderly. “It’s just that there are things in the world that science can’t explain. This raven is…just one of them.”
She exhaled a painful sigh. She didn’t seem to have found his words comforting.
May Dai-mo help him.
How could he explain what he couldn’t fully understand himself?
But he was worried about her; there were a lot of changes happening too fast. His heart bled for her.
“What happened to you today, to us,” he said softly, “it’s something that your rational, scientific mind won’t be able to comprehend.”
“You can be damn sure my mind can’t comprehend this,” she replied, pointing at the ethereal bird in front of her.
“Look, take lightning for example,” he replied, trying to stir her attention away from his noo-hi. “Five hundred years ago no one knew how lightning occurred, and ancient civilizations even considered it a god. But today, we don’t get scared of it anymore because we’ve embrace it as a natural phenomenon.”
“Yeah, because we know it’s just the manifestation of electric currents in the sky,” she replied. She still sounded slightly freaked out but at least she was talking.
“And just like the electric currents went from being a god to a mundane occurrence that is part of our everyday lives, the magic in natural elements will too, one day.”
He paused and checked her reaction. A slight frown wrinkled her brow but she looked a bit more centered now.
He lazily brushed his hand along her arm, hoping to bring some warmth to her heart, and was silently happy when he noticed her relax under his touch. “The elders in my tribe believed everything in the world was linked by unseen forces, like an energetic bond.”
“Do you believe that?” she asked, sounding more curious than skeptic.
He didn’t know what to say.
Once upon a time, he would have told her his elders were full of crap, that their so-called divine protectors had allowed his entire tribe to burn and die. But since he had met her, his cynic dogmas had taken a tow.
“I don’t know if the leaders of my tribe were right or wrong, but I know in my gut that the Binding Stone changed you somehow, Chloe. The elders at the cultural center said that, once activated, the stone binds itself to the owner, channeling its powers through him―or in this case, through her―but I believe there was something in you that was also unleashed by the stone’s magic.”
She took a deep breath then rested her head on his shoulder. Damn, her body felt good next to his. “Yeah, that’s what it felt like back in the woods, like the stone was the fuel and my mind was the engine. It felt so weird and so right at the same time, but now I just don’t know anymore.”
Mason’s heart cringed seeing his petite tornado look so helpless. He felt the urge to rescue her, to save her, to fight dragons and demons just to bring her back to her normal curious, stubborn, talking-to-herself way. But he wasn’t ready to tell her the whole truth.
“You’re just tired, you need to rest. The world will look much clearer tomorrow, I promise,” he replied, sheltering her in his arms.
His fingers had minds of their own and started playing with a lock of her golden hair.
Chloe didn’t push him away, instead melting even deeper into his embrace, so he allowed himself to enjoy the serenity of that moment with her. But the more relaxed Chloe became, the tenser Mason grew. His mind became acutely aware of every sensation her closeness triggered in his
body―the pressure of her curves against his torso, the sweetness in her natural perfume, the way her smooth skin felt slightly cold against his touch.
His intention had been to use his body’s warmth to calm her nerves and then hit the road again, back to Hot Springs, but from the innocent contact he had allowed between them blossomed something much more meaningful that startled Mason to the core―at that moment, his mind decided to acknowledge what his heart had known for a very long time.
Chloe shifted in his arms and looked him in the eye. “Do you believe in coincidences, Mason?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes.”
“Do you believe it was just a coincidence that we met?”
Hell, no. “Maybe.”
She looked down and chewed at her lower lip, drawing his attention to that delicious part of her face.
“What do you believe?” he asked before his mouth did something else.
“I kind of agree with your elders,” she replied slowly, almost scared of his reaction.
His brow shot upward. “You, a daughter of science, believe that we are linked by unseen forces and spiritual bonds?”
“I’m not a scientist, I’m an historian. And just like you said, I can’t deny what’s happening. The way I found the stone, the way I found…” She didn’t finish the sentence but Mason could swear she was about to say the way she had found him.
He decided not to press her, but took the opportunity to find out why the Binding Stone had chosen her. “May I ask you a question in return?”
She nodded.
“How do you know so much about Mantaka?”
“Books.”
“What about the Turkey Dance?”
“What about it?”
“How did you know the choreography?”
“I just followed the others,” she replied, shrugging.
“You were perfect, though,” he replied, trying to prompt her to share more.
A cute blush colored her cheeks. “Thanks, I guess.”
He knew she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. “So, where did you learn to speak all those native languages? I mean, only a small fraction of Americans can speak a second language but you know four or five—including the dead ones.”